


Different People

by nevertoosweets



Series: The Scars of Our Past [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Aurors, Canon Divergence - Post-Hogwarts, Depression, Draco Malfoy in a Flannel Shirt and Baseball Cap, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, HEA, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, POV Draco Malfoy, POV Hermione Granger, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Quidditch Player Ginny Weasley, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Working Man Draco
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 66,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26350363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevertoosweets/pseuds/nevertoosweets
Summary: Draco had gotten it wrong. He’d thought that they had been working towards something new. He’d hoped, for a brief moment, that there’d be something worth coming back to England for, but they weren’t different people, after all, no matter how changed he felt.Some things aren’t able to be glossed over or set aside. Scars, for example. Hadn’t scars been the thing that started it all? And now it’s ended with two different scars on opposite arms of two very different people and he didn’t know why he'd thought that’d be something either of them could ever ignore.Both scars had only ever caused her pain.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Series: The Scars of Our Past [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956877
Comments: 215
Kudos: 301





	1. Order of Merlin

**Author's Note:**

> Trans Rights Are Human Rights  
> I don't stand with JKR and her backward beliefs. I wish the author of this beloved series that promoted equality, uniqueness, and acceptance didn't make others who sought escape in her world feel so unwelcome. Trans Lives Matter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione Granger feels like an actor reading a script, playing a part expected of her, watching as her friends move on after the War without her. In Wisconsin, on a magical creatures reserve with his new found-family, Draco Malfoy finally knows peace, five years after running away from the nightmares he lived through. But then Hermione appears on the Reserve, asking him to come back. Will he return to his life in England? Will Hermione have any say in it? Will they help each other find who they are now, changed after the War, into two very different people?

#### 

####  **November 2002 | Minister’s Office**

“Good morning, Kingsley.”

“Hermione.”

The Minister for Magic rose from his plush leather chair and rounded his oversized wooden desk to greet the brown-haired witch with a peck on the cheek.

“How are you today, my dear?” he asked.

“Brilliant!”

She pasted a toothy smile on her face, hoping it looked genuine. Her hands absentmindedly fidgeted with the tie around her wrap dress. 

Hermione Granger was, in fact, not feeling _brilliant_ today. 

She had woken this morning from nightmares again and she had been unable to stop the tremors rattling her bones and tensing her muscles until she had shocked her system with an ice-cold shower. And even then the echoes of deranged cackling had followed her throughout her flat as she dressed for work. 

Finally, with a mug of hot coffee warming her perpetually cold hands, she had started to feel better. That is until she received a harried owl from Ginny with the news: Ron was planning on proposing to Luna. She nearly spilled her coffee on poor Crookshanks who had been resting below her kitchen stool.

Hermione was happy for them, of course! Ron and Luna made sense like quills and ink, but a few years ago, she had once thought that _she_ would be engaged to Ron, and though that time is long past, she couldn’t deny a bit of loneliness that filled her at the news. 

Ron was ready to settle down. Harry and Ginny were expecting their first child. And Hermione was just...Hermione. Brightest Witch of her Age. Bookworm. The Ministry’s brightest star. Everything she had always been expected to be—except married to one-third of the Golden Trio.

Not that she was ready to get married or wanted to be married to Ron, mind you. They had broken up for a reason and they remained, despite everything, best friends. But, all the same, it’s tough not to feel like she was somehow being left behind.

She began to feel the same anxiety that filled her mind lately. She loved her job and her little flat, she loved working with Kingsley and the DMLE to dismantle biased laws. But everyone was expecting her to follow this path and she hated feeling like she was just following some sort of script people had laid out for her. She was Hermione Granger and she was a smart and dedicated witch. She liked her life, for the most part, but did she like it just because she was acing a project everyone else had assigned to her? 

And with all her friends paired off, building their own lives together, was she somehow failing at being an adult? Would she remain waking alone from nightmares of the War as everyone else around her seemed to move on and forget them? 

Kingsley smiled softly at Hermione and she caught his eyes flicking down to her trembling hands. She hid them casually behind the folds in her robes, her fingernails digging painfully into her palms in an attempt to stop the anxious tremors.

What did she really want? Truly? Who did she want to be?

He sighed and she knew then that everyone could see how much she still struggled. 

“Let’s start where we left off last week,” Kingsley said and gestured towards the sofa. 

Hermione bit back a sigh of relief as she spread her parchments across the coffee table and quickly got to work, rattling off quotes for various venues and catering.

It’s been four years, six months, and two days since the Battle at Hogwarts, and Kingsley, as Minister for Magic, had enlisted Hermione to help him coordinate a Remembrance Gala on the fifth anniversary next May. 

He told her that he hoped it would show Wizarding Britain that they had rebuilt and healed since the War, but Hermione certainly didn’t feel so healed. 

“Thank you again, Hermione, for leading this. I couldn’t trust it to anyone else,” Kingsley said, his spectacles low on his nose as he looked over her budget analysis. “I hope it doesn’t interrupt your Deputy Head duties too much.”

Hermione bit her cheek. Another expected Hermioneism—as she had begun to call them to herself—always ready to take on more. 

“Not at all, Minister. Robards was very understanding.” Robards had been understanding, but only because he knew Hermione wasn’t capable of neglecting any responsibility for position in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. 

A knock on the door interrupted Hermione’s thoughts. 

“Excuse me, Minister. Hermione.”

“Harry!” Kingsley set down Hermione’s parchments and removed his spectacles. “It’s been a while. What can I do for you?”

Harry Potter stepped inside the Minister’s office and leaned against the mahogany filing cabinets next to the door, crossing his arms.

He always seemed to be leaning on something, Hermione noticed, as if he was perennially exhausted.

His long, raven hair was pulled back in a bun at the nape of his neck and she thought, not for the first time, that he was looking less like his father and more like Sirius every day. 

“I know you are planning on giving out some Orders of Merlin during this event.” He uncrossed one hand and rubbed at the cropped beard that covered the entire lower half of his face. “I’d like to suggest a nomination.”

Kingsley raised a hand. “Harry, I’m sorry. We discussed Snape already—”

“Narcissa Malfoy,” Harry cut him off.

Kingsley dropped his reading glasses on the low table. “Excuse me—”

“Harry,” Hermione whispered, shocked. 

Harry shot Hermione a look, but remained silent, crossing one leg over the other.

He hadn’t spoken of Narcissa since her trial, and even that had been difficult for him to do. Harry held no goodwill towards the Malfoys as a family, but neither Harry nor Hermione were morally willing to stand by and let the mother or son go to Azkaban. Not after what Narcissa did for him, even if for selfish reasons.

Ron had not been so generous and made sure to remind them of every wrongdoing a Malfoy had done to them since they were eleven years old. 

Kingsley, wide-eyed, looked between the two friends as they silently communicated with each other. Finally, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked back at Harry. 

“Alright,” he sighed, “Yes, okay. I’ll submit the nomination to the Wizengamot—”

Harry began to speak, but Kingsley held up a hand again to cut him off.

“—I will submit the nomination, but that’s all, Harry. After that, it’s up to them. I don’t have much control over their choices, you know that, and the Malfoy family—Narcissa included—have hurt plenty of others, despite her having saved you, though I will remind them of that fact.”

Harry’s brows furrowed over his round glasses as he considered Kingsley's offer. After a moment, he stood straight again, and nodding once to Kingsley, he turned to Hermione. 

“Gin wanted me to tell you to Floo her later,” Harry said.

Hermione reddened. Harry had been more than supportive to both her and Ron after their breakup but she hated to think that Harry thought she was still pining after Ron. She would make sure to mention that to Ginny later. 

Harry’s face softened a fraction at her flushed cheeks and gave her a sympathetic smile before closing the frosted glass door behind him.

Yes, she would most certainly talk to Ginny about that later.

Hermione blew out the breath she was holding and turned to Kingsley whose head had fallen back against the top of the couch.

She bit her cheek, but couldn’t stop the defense from falling from her lips.

“Narcissa saved his life, Kingsley.” He lifted his head and turned to Hermione as she continued. “And she died in that Manor alone.”

Hermione couldn’t get _The_ _Daily_ _Prophet_ headline out of her mind: _Narcissa Malfoy Passes Away Alone—Son, Ex-Death Eater Absent._

Despite the way Narcissa had treated her and other Muggle-borns, Hermione still felt like she owed the woman for Harry’s life. She by no means liked the Malfoy matriarch or felt any feelings of friendliness towards her, but Hermione did—had—pitied her at the end.

She thought of her own parents in Australia, clueless about her existence, but at least they had each other, right? Malfoy, _Draco_ that is, hadn’t even been there when Narcissa passed away. Hadn’t even gone to the funeral. Hermione could never restore her own mother’s memories, but she would still be in Australia, in any capacity she could, the second she heard Monica Wilkins was ill.

Malfoy certainly hadn’t cared so much. According to the _Prophet_ and Theo, he never came back to see his mother. How must have that felt for Narcissa, to be alone in that great house for years? Husband to die in Azkaban and son out of the country. He must have known his mother was dying. Why didn’t he come home?

Hermione pictured Narcissa walking the Manor grounds alone, drifting through the halls. 

Wandering into the drawing room, the chandelier shattered, bloodstains on the floor. 

Hermione’s head suddenly sparked in pain and crazed laughter echoed through her ears.

“You’ve always had such a big heart, Hermione.” Kingsley’s voice brought her back to his office and he smiled at her affectionately. “I’m glad the war didn’t take that from you.”

She looked away, her chest tightening and she shuffled her parchments to cover the tremors in her hands and drown out the vestiges of the ghostly laughter. 

_It took something, Kingsley,_ she thought.

* * *

####  **February 2003 | Wisconsin**

The sky was a stormy grey in the early Midwestern morning. 

The icy wind drove through the long grass and ripped around the trees surrounding the clearing, ruffling the flannel shirt of a man trudging towards a round timber enclosure.

He precariously balanced a bucket of skinned meat, a wand, and a bundle of firewood on his left arm. As he reached for the metal latch with his other, a Bowtruckle, hidden in a woodpecker hole on one of the posts, clamored up his plaid sleeve. 

“Get off,” he muttered, shaking his arm. 

The bucket teetered ominously and his shaking was of no use. The Bowtruckle reached the top of her climb and sat snuggly on his shoulder, safely out of the biting wind. The man’s mouth twitched dangerously close to a smile.

With the gate open, the man shuffled through and set his items down just inside. He twirled his wand once between his fingers and shoved it in his denim back pocket. He pushed the gate closed with his newly freed arm and heard a low trill sound from the edge of the trees where the enclosure disappeared in the forest.

“Come here, you great beast,” he murmured. 

A silvery mass appeared through the forest edge, the head of a great eagle attached to the body of a horse taking shape.

The hippogriff clipped her beak in greeting to the man and trotted across the field with her tail swishing. He stood still, waiting, as she slowed her gait and stopped a few feet before him.

Removing his navy baseball cap, the man bowed low, sweeping his arm across his chest. The cold wind pushed the loose white-blonde hair from the top of his head off to the side.

“Chroma,” he greeted. 

Chroma’s massive front claws scrapped the snowy dirt, leaving tracks in the earth as she regarded him. She flapped her left wing, the right having been ripped from her body by a torturous owner long ago, and bowed low in return.

The man smirked, and smoothing back the longer strands of hair on top of his head, he slid his baseball cap back on. Soft feathers flowed through his fingers as he brushed Chroma's neck.

“Have some breakfast, girl.”

He reached down into the bucket and tossed a hunk of plucked, pink chicken into the air. Chroma’s neck shot forward, her beak catching the meat in a snap, and the Bowtruckle let out a high-pitched cheer, clapping her leafy hands in delight.

“That’s a good girl,” the man chuckled and he tossed up another chicken.

“Never thought I’d see Draco Malfoy friends with a hippogriff.”

The blonde man froze, one hand in the bucket around the last hunk of pale pink meat. 

That voice…

A woman’s scream echoed somewhere in his mind. 

He hadn’t heard that voice outside of his sleep in almost five years. It was softer, more mature, but he would know it anywhere.

_“Where did you get this sword?”_

_“No, no! Please! PLEASE! We just found it! We found it…”_

Draco straightened up and tossed the last chicken to Chroma.

“Granger.” He swallowed heavily, the name sticking in his throat, and he wiped his hands clean across his denim pants.

“Never thought I’d see you in Muggle clothes either,” she continued. He could hear the restrained curiosity, testing, poking, seeing what she could discover. 

He turned around slowly, unwilling to meet the eyes of the woman who had filled his nightmares. Her soft voice was at war with the screaming echoing inside his head. His hand itched to silence it, but he didn’t know where to aim his wand. At his own head? Or would a _Silencio_ at the source stop the cries that echoed?

He reached over the top of the enclosure to unlatch the gate and pulled his wand out of his back denim pocket with the other hand. He didn’t have the slightest clue as to why Hermione Granger was currently standing on the St. Cloud Magical Creatures Reserve drive, but for her to come all the way to middle-of-nowhere, Wisconsin didn’t bode well for him. 

The Bowtruckle on his shoulder sensed his mood and gripped the buzzed blonde hair on the back of his neck. She swung herself down Draco’s arm and disappeared into the tall grass.

For five years, Draco Malfoy successfully avoided any reminder of his past. As soon as he and his mother were acquitted, Draco left the Manor, bought an illegal International Portkey in Knockturn Alley, and ended up in Wizarding Boston, which had turned out...not to be a good time for him. A year of too much alcohol and not enough outlets for his anger ended up with him or another wizard bloody on the street one too many times for the local Aurors’ taste.

Eventually, Will and Rose O’Brien, a middle-aged couple, found him in a Salem tavern one night, arguing with the bartender who had—quite unfairly, in Draco’s opinion—cut him off.

They were in town picking up an injured Kneazle and they offered him a job on their reserve. Draco often wondered to himself if they ended up picking up two injured creatures that day.

After almost no consideration, he had accepted the job, having had enough of Boston and Salem at that point. It was a spontaneous choice, barely a thought to it, but he was glad he did.

Quickly, he found purpose in Wisconsin on the St. Cloud Magical Creatures Reserve. He found silence and peace and no reminders of his past—other than overcoming his fear of Chroma. 

Draco doesn’t know what the O'Briens had seen in him initially, but eventually, Will had found comradery in Draco’s sullen silence and dedication to distracting, often back-breaking work, and his wife, Rose, gained a close friend and confidant, matching Draco’s dark humor and dry wit. 

“But, I suppose wizards' robes wouldn’t do for this kind of work, would they, Malfoy?” Granger pushed on, filling the silence Draco left.

He winced at the sound of her teasing lilt saying his last name. It battled with years of her biting it out—as if there was no greater insult than being a Malfoy.

That was the best part about working with the O’Briens, he thought. They didn’t know the Malfoy name, and frankly, they didn’t care about his past as long as his work was done by sundown.

Though that didn’t mean they were completely out of touch.

The O’Briens subscribed to all Wizarding papers, looking for notices of magical menageries or familiars for sale. But living where they did, the post came infrequently, if at all.

One unlucky day, after a year living and working on the Reserve, a haggard owl arrived with a month old _Daily Prophet_. The date printed was April 5, 2000. Draco’s face was front and center and scowling, his mother's photo next to it, eyes sunken. The headline: _‘Narcissa Malfoy Passes Away Alone—Son, Ex-Death Eater Absent.’ by Rita Skeeter._

“This you?” Will had asked.

He held the paper out towards Draco. His younger face blinked back at him, brows furrowing at the cameras’ bursting flashbulbs. The photo was from the last time he was in London and the last time he had seen Hermione Granger. 

_The Daily Prophet’s_ photographers had lined the hallway outside the Ministry courtroom at his hearing. To their shock and scandalous delight, Draco and Narcissa had been released from all charges, thanks to the testimonies of one boy-who-would-not-die and his bushy-haired sidekick. 

Draco slammed his ax down into the chopping block. With a flick of his wand, the ax could have easily chopped the wood, but he had been feeling particularly irritable that morning and the force of the ax breaking through each slab of wood had felt good.

His hands shook as he took the paper from Will. _So they know,_ he'd thought. _It’s unfortunate but expected. Who was he kidding, running away from his past?_

Rose stood a few feet behind her husband. Her mouth pressed into a thin line, but her eyes—normally so expressive—had been unreadable to him. 

“Yes,” Draco replied softly. He closed his eyes, unable to look at the moving photograph any longer. 

“You were with Voldemort?” Draco winced at the name and his forearm burned. “A Death Eater?” 

“I wasn’t _with_ him,” Draco growled. He crumbled the page and threw it into the feed bucket at his feet. “I’m sorry. I’ll pack my stuff and be gone in the morning.”

Rose scoffed.

“Will,” she snapped at her husband.

The sun broke through the cloudy May sky. Draco focused on the ax head in the block as it gleamed brightly.

Will gave his wife a small smile. “It seems to us,” he said when he’d turned back to Draco, “that a young boy doesn’t have much of a choice when his life is threatened.”

“I was old enough.”

“What was that?”

Draco sighed and met Will’s gaze, raising his voice, “I was sixteen when I took the Dark Mark. I was old enough to understand the choice I was making.”

Will shrugged.

“Well, in this country, it seems you have to be at least eighteen to have a choice in your life,” he grumbled. “Anyway, you’re not going anywhere. I’m grilling burgers for dinner tonight.”

He turned and disappeared around the side of the house.

Rose had shot Draco a toothy grin then, her eyes sparkling as she’d said, “I expect the Grindylow pond to be clean by the end of the week.” 

Chroma’s gate swung shut and the metal latch clanged, bringing Draco back to the present and the bushy-haired woman before him.

Although, he couldn’t call it that anymore, could he? 

Draco’s eyes narrowed as he finally took Granger in. Her hair had calmed down since their Hogwarts days—or she had figured out its tricks. It fell well past her shoulders in a mix of dark brown waves and ringlets, slightly shorter in the front and framing her oval face. Still so haphazard and frizzy, but she had made it work for her.

She ran her hands through it, as she waited for him to acknowledge her, flipping the mass of it so it all fell over one shoulder, lighter caramel strands glinting in the low sunlight.

Draco ignored the way he noticed that, following the path of her hand through the strands, and focused on the main question: _Why was she here?_

He hadn’t thought of Hermione Granger in years. He did his best not to think of anything from the War, but especially not Hermione _fucking_ Granger.

Thoughts of her—not that he had thought of her often in his life. No, not at all. Why would he?—always led to that night in the Manor drawing room.

Aunt Bella’s deranged laughter. Granger writhing on the floor. Her eyes had been focused and impossibly strong, trying to stay conscious as another Cruciatus Curse contorted her body, while Draco willed himself to not look away. 

No amount of Occlumency had been enough to block out her screams or his inane desire to end them, to take her out there, to do _something_. He had only prayed that Aunt Bella was having too much fun with her victim to focus any Legilimency at him.

Draco had heard her tortured screams echo in his head for months after. For years. He hadn't woken, covered in sweat, choked on his own breath, from that particular nightmare in a long time.

He glared at Granger as she continued to observe his silence curiously.

He had worked too hard to let her appear out of nowhere and break that streak now. 

“Did you really go to a Muggle baseball game?” Granger tilted her head at the Milwaukee Brewers logo on Draco’s cap.

At the picture of him at a Muggle sports game, her eyes danced—so full of life compared to the tortured stare in his nightmares—but still not as they had in school, and there was a quiet tenor to her voice now. She spoke softly. Something wasn’t letting the impassioned swot he remembered from Hogwarts push through.

He shook his head and glowered. He didn’t like this Granger. He had seen it at his trial too. He wanted her to spit at him, not soften her gaze as her eyes tried to read his own, to figure him out. 

Draco still hadn’t spoken and Granger’s amused curiosity for him made his chest heat in anger.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped.

“You can take your hand off your wand. I’m not here to harm you.” Granger stretched her arms out, her black overcoat pulling open over her knitted blue jumper—no wand in hand.

The sight of her outstretched arms, wandless and unarmed, shot Draco back to when he was last at Hogwarts, on the steps to the boathouse, and Granger had turned her back to his wand and walked away.

“Forgive me,” Draco sneered, trying to regain some familiar footing around her, “if I don’t quite trust that.”

Granger stuck her hands in her denim pockets and rolled her eyes, relaxing her weight onto one leg.

Draco could count on one hand how many times he’d seen her in Muggle clothes, and these, at least, were not covered in dirt and blood. The denim jeans hugged her legs and her overcoat curved gently over her hips. His instincts balked at the thought, but he had to admit: she filled these out better than shapeless wizarding robes.

He shook his head, banishing the thought about what Granger's arse looked like in jeans and the memory of the boathouse steps.

“Why–are–you–here?” He ground out each word through his teeth.

She frowned and raised her hands, palms facing out.

“Something has come up and I thought you deserved to know. Have a chance to accept,” she said, firmly.

She opened the small beaded bag hanging at her hip, her arm disappearing into it up to the elbow. Draco’s arm twitched as he watched her, but he kept his wand pointed towards the earth. She pulled a parchment envelope out and held it out towards him.

“What is it?” He snapped.

His heart pounded heavily at the sight of the purple _MM_ stamp.

 _Did the Wizengamot change their mind? Was he being sent to Azkaban?_ His mind raced in panic. _No, they would send Aurors for that, right? Saint Potter and Weaselbee would not miss the opportunity to haul him off._

Granger’s arm and envelope remained stretched out towards him.

“The Ministry has decided to hold a gala next May. In remembrance.”

She took a step closer and Draco took a step back. Chroma, sensing an intruder getting closer to her enclosure, lifted her head, regarding Granger coolly. She raised her left wing and huffed sharply through her beak.

Granger met Chroma's stare over Draco’s shoulder and dropped her arm back to her side. She bowed slowly to the hippogriff and Draco tensed, wondering if he was going to have to save her from the normally testy creature. 

Would that help make up for at least one of the times he’d been so cruel to her? His brain urged him to apologize to Granger, to say the word “sorry” just once, but his tongue remained still. No amount of apologies or good deeds would make up for what she suffered under his family anyway.

Draco held his breath, but Chroma bowed back easily and he gaped at the silver creature. It had taken him months for the hippogriff to allow him to be within even six feet of her enclosure.

“We’re awarding some Orders of Merlin that evening,” Granger said, turning back to Draco as if nothing had interrupted her.

He shot Chroma a surly look of betrayal over his shoulder as she returned to her grooming.

“For acts of bravery and exceptional magic during the War,” Granger continued.

Draco returned his focus to the brunette, incredulous. _What could that possibly do with him?_

“And?” he drawled.

She tilted her head, eyes flicking between his. Draco reached a hand up to his cap’s brim and adjusted it lower over his eyes, shifting under her probing stare.

Granger sucked in a deep breath.

“The Wizengamot is awarding Narcissa Malfoy with the Order of Merlin, First Class for exceptional acts of bravery during the Battle at Hogwarts,” she recited it like he’d asked her what page 94 in _Hogwarts, A History_ said.

Draco’s brain short-circuited. He couldn’t form a single comprehensive thought.

_Order of Merlin? First Class? Mother?_

He stared at Granger, his hands growing numb. She stood patiently as he worked through her statement.

_She—I mean—Why?_

He couldn’t make his mouth form the words. 

_What did she do to deserve an Order of Merlin?_ Draco scowled, suddenly furious. _She and Father sent me to school with an_ ** _impossible_ **_task. My life was under constant threat. She had Snape watch my every move._ He tapped his wand against his leg, tiny sparks shooting out onto the grass. _She let her crazy fucking sister_ **_Crucio_ **_me when I failed to kill Dumbledore._

Finally, Granger’s patience ran out.

“I thought you deserved to know,” she stated and held the letter out to him again. “And I wanted to give you the chance to accept it on her behalf. The letter contains all the information so far about the event.”

Draco stuck his wand back in his pocket and snatched the parchment from her outstretched hand, thumbing the purple Ministry seal.

“Accept it? Do you mean at the gala? Back there?”

“Yes,” she nodded, “Back home.”

Draco flinched at the word. It hadn’t been _home_ to him since the Dark Lord first stepped his bare fucking feet through the Manor’s front doors. 

He shoved the letter in the chest pocket of his flannel shirt and looked down at her coldly, but Granger was staring past him towards the sky, her eyes calculating as if she was working out what to say next.

He watched as she chewed on her bottom lip, and finally, with a sigh, she turned her gaze back to him. He tore his eyes from where they had been locked on her mouth and snapped them to a point over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, flatly.

His chest suddenly burned with rage.

 _Sorry_.

The word he couldn’t bring himself to say to her fell so easily from her lips. He didn’t deserve to hear it from her and he wanted to tell her just that, scream it until she understood, but the words died in his throat.

Instead, he reached down to wrench the ax out of the chopping block next to the enclosure and sneered, “I bet you are.”

Granger started, her mouth twisting in anger, but he cut her off before she could retort.

“The Ministry must still be a fucking mess if they’re going around giving Death Eaters’ wives Orders of Merlin.” He put the tip of the ax against the chopping block and leaned against the handle, looking down his nose at her in his best Lucius impression. “You’ll have to count me out of that insanity."

Instantly he could tell his little act pissed her off and he suddenly regretted it. Granger's face had grown red hot and her jaw moved slowly.

He sighed silently at himself. Was he not better than this? Had he not spent years escaping the memory of his father only to put the mask back on at the first sight of his old school rival?

He was _not_ Lucius. He was twenty-three years old, had survived a mad dark wizard living in his house when he was a teenager, and here he was acting like he was still a little First Year and she was nothing but a buck-toothed Mud—

_Fuck._

His wand sent a shower of sparks at the grass and Granger stepped back sharply.

He had scoured that word from his brain years ago and here it appeared again, dropping from his mind at the first sight of her in five years. 

Granger scowled.

“How could you be so—? Do you even know what she—?”

Her hands twitched and for a split second Draco thought she was going to slap him like in Third Year. 

Abruptly, Granger shoved her hands into her coat pockets, sighing to herself as if the fight had just fled her body.

“Fine.” She shrugged. “I guess I see why. It seems nice here." She looked around the Reserve wistfully. "Away from all the memories.” 

Draco wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but Granger had reached one hand back into her beaded bag and pulled out a balled-up, white handkerchief. 

She held it out to Draco.

“If you change your mind.”

“What is it?”

He took it gingerly and started unfolding the edges.

“A Portkey.”

He quickly clenched the handkerchief closed and glared.

“If you change your mind,” she went on, ignoring his look, “it’ll take you to the London Borough of Islington.”

“Thanks,” Draco sneered again and held it out back towards her. “But I won’t be needing it.”

Granger waved him off.

“Keep it,” she replied coolly and pulled the strings on her beaded bag closed. “Throw it in the Grindylow pond for all I care.”

She turned around and started down the dirt road towards the line of trees that marked the edge of the Reserve, clearly done dealing with Draco Malfoy. He didn’t blame her. 

He watched her walk away, his throat tightening against the words that would call her back. His mind battled with wanting her to leave faster and wanting the company of a familiar past, to ask her about…well, about back in Britain.

She was the first person he’d seen in five years from his former life there and as much as he resented her, his brain filled with questions: Had she seen any of his old Slytherin mates? Theo? Was Pansy still a royal bitch? 

He wanted to tell her she should never have come here and he wanted to ask her how she had found him.

He wanted to ask her to stay for lunch.

He wanted to know what the hell his mother did.

Granger reached the end of the dirt road and raised a hand in farewell, Disapparating with a crack.

Draco stared at the spot she disappeared from, the words dying on his tongue. 

_Why did you come all this way?_

Memories from the Hogwarts boathouse and the elevator ride after his trial flickered in his mind. 

_After everything I’ve done to you, why do you continue to treat me better than I deserve?_

“Who was that?

Draco jumped and whipped his head around.

Rose stood just over his shoulder, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. 

“ _Merlin_ , Rose,” he gasped. “You’re as silent as a Kneazle.”

She laughed and raised her chin towards the empty road. “Friend of yours?”

Draco picked up the ax and swung it over his shoulder.

“Not exactly.”

“What’s exactly?”

One side of Rose’s mouth lifted and she looked at him out of the corner of her blue eyes, a smirk plastered on her lips. 

Draco didn’t respond, unusually not in the mood to match wits with Rose. He pocketed the handkerchief silently and headed back towards the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided, since I was half-employed with no health insurance for therapy, that it was high time I got back into writing. Draco Malfoy in a plaid flannel shirt and a Muggle baseball hat just would not leave me alone so I had to write his story.
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> Breathing Underwater / Metric  
> Gun Song / The Lumineers
> 
> I know Rose is Hermione's/Ron's daughter's name in canon, but as I was writing this OC her name just jumped onto the page and she wouldn't take a new one.


	2. Dark Mark

#### February 2003 | Islington, London

Even though Harry and Ginny have been living at (and renovating) Number 12 Grimmauld Place since Ginny finished at Hogwarts, Hermione still felt like she had used a time-turner every time she was over—and she was over quite often, having rented a flat only a couple of blocks away. 

Old Walburga Black’s portrait had been destroyed and the Black Family tapestry had been moved upstairs to Harry’s office, but Hermione still expected to find a boggart in the closet or felt the pull to search for clues to a Horcrux or unknown mystery. The pain at not seeing Remus or Sirius in the kitchen was the worst part.

She had always felt that Number 12 was eerily quiet—even with the Weasley family and half the Order living there. Tonight, however, she felt like she didn’t have enough space to breathe, her ears ringing from all the shouts, toasts, and laughter of the friends and family crowded in the small sitting room.

“Bah!”

Hermione smiled and looked down at the wriggling little bundle in her arms. James Sirius squirmed his tiny form, trying with all his might to break his swaddle. Unruly raven hair was growing in at strange angles, but it was slowly getting flatter and wetter in the heat. She pulled the blanket away from his body, freeing his tiny fists.

“Baby’s get so sweaty, don’t they?” Angelina announced.

She and Ginny had appeared from the kitchen door, new drinks in hand, her own toddler running somewhere around the house with Teddy Lupin.

“Here.” Ginny handed Hermione a glass of wine with one hand and deftly scooped James into her arms with the other. “I got it for you,” she said as Hermione protested the drink.

“Thanks,” she replied, “He’s beautiful, Ginny.”

Ginny rolled her eyes.

“He’s only a couple of months old and I can tell he’s going to be as much of a handful as his namesakes sounded like.” 

Harry stepped up behind Ginny’s shoulder and pecked her on the cheek as he smoothed down his son’s hair.

“Sorry about this mess on your head, kid,” he whispered.

Hermione watched the newly-grown family before her and tried to ignore the hollowness she felt in her stomach.

She was happy for Harry—unbelievably _thrilled_ for him—that he finally had peace and joy in his life. He deserved it and Hermione knew that not every day had always been so easy for him. 

For a while, the three of them—Harry, Ron, and Hermione—would end up at the Leaky Cauldron a couple of nights a month, sitting in companionable silence and drinking away the horrors they’d seen in their youth. But those nights, at least for the boys, were growing fewer and farther between. 

More often than not, Harry seemed to have easier days than her. Ron, too, since he left his Aurorship to join George at the joke shop. It helped, she supposed, that they each had partners to support them through their bad days—Harry with Ginny, and Ron with Luna. 

That’s not to say that her two best friends weren’t there for her when she needed them, or that Hermione was the type of woman who needed to rely on a partner for her happiness.

Besides, Crookshanks hadn’t taken to strangers well in the past. The rare few times that Hermione had brought a man home, they’d usually woken up with the oversized orange feline leaning over them, or worse, a scratch across their face.

But, still, it seemed… _nice_ … to share your life with someone and have them understand you intrinsically.

And it seemed like everyone she knew had found that someone but her.

“Ang,” Harry turned to Angelina, cutting through Hermione’s thoughts. “George says he’s waiting on you for a signal?” 

“Oh! Wait ‘til you see this!”

Angelina pushed her drink into Harry’s hand who had clear regret on his face for having passed along the message.

“Ang, no!” Ginny called after her, distressed. “Fleur and I just finished re-doing this room!”

Angelina wove through the crowd, pushing aside Neville to grab Ron and Luna’s arms, situating the couple in front of the fireplace, and stepping away to give George a thumbs up.

He and Seamus were on either side of Ron and Luna, each holding the opposite end of a long ribbon above the couple’s heads. 

“If Seamus is involved, this can’t be good,” Harry muttered.

Ginny looked at him, panicked, and pressed James’ head closer to her chest.

At once, George and Seamus tugged sharply on the ribbon and an explosive _BOOM_ wrung through Grimmauld Place. 

Ron, having spent enough time with George testing new products, smartly ducked, throwing his arms above his head as sparks rained down over him. Luna, however, stretched up, clapping gleefully as small sparklers spelling _“Happy Engagement”_ flashed and spit glitter above their heads.

And scorched the new wallpaper above the mantle. 

_“Finnigan!”_ Ginny screeched and James wailed in her arms. 

Seamus bolted through the kitchen door Dean held open for him and Harry snatched a screaming James from Ginny’s arms as she raced after him, bat-bogeys flying. 

“George, I just ‘ad zat done!” Fleur whined.

George made for the stairs but Bill grabbed his collar and held him in place.

The rest of the guests erupted in laughter, clapping at the sparkling pronouncement as they gathered around the couple to congratulate them again. 

Hermione covered her mouth with her hand, hiding the giggles she couldn’t help escaping at the scene.

Through the crowded room, Ron’s eyes met hers and she smiled, mouthing _“congrats.”_ He returned her grin, rolling his eyes at struggling George.

In another life, she would have been the one ducking under the sparklers as her friends congratulated her and Ron. But that was a different life, different role, and she’d played it well—for a while.

Ron and Hermione had split not long after she’d returned from finishing her Seventh Year and they had moved in together. But after failing to bring back her parents’ memories; after watching Ron milk his fame for all its worth in public, but falling apart at nightmares of Fred’s death; after one too many explosive fights as he tried to bring Hermione out of the shell she’d fallen into, the script had reverted. 

In the end, the two of them decided to return to what they knew best—friendship—even if it was taking a little time to get back there. And as she watched him laugh and kiss Luna on the cheek while she delicately sprinkled glitter on his head, Hermione could see it was the best decision she’s made since the War ended.

James had finally calmed down in Harry’s arms, but the sparklers had roused the party back to full steam and Hermione felt like the sitting room was more crowded than before, the warmth of too many bodies pressed in on her in the small room. The underside of her forearm itched in the heat.

“You okay, Hermione?” Harry asked.

His eyes flicked down to her arm and her fingers which had been scratching at her scar stilled. She tugged her sleeve down, forcing her hands to her side. 

“It’s gotten so hot in here,” she quickly replied, fanning herself with her hand. “I think I’ll step out front for some air.”

Harry didn’t look convinced, but he nodded.

“Sure. I should probably put James and Teddy to bed anyway. He's staying over the weekend.”

Little, five-year-old Teddy jumped up and down on the couch, trying to grab the sparks in the air.

Hermione smiled and squeezed Harry’s shoulder once in thanks.

Grabbing her coat from the front hall, she stepped outside, and took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the cold night air and finally feeling the tightness in her chest ease.

* * *

From below the brim of his cap, Draco’s eyes traced over Granger’s form, highlighted in the porch lights, as she lifted her face to the falling snow. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wrought iron fence of the Black Family home.

 _Potter home_ , he corrected himself.

He knew exactly where the Portkey had spat him out. He'd only visited once as a child, but Aunt Walburga’s home had been a contentious subject amongst Bellatrix and his mother when Sirius Black had returned. The two had claimed that their blood traitor cousin had no business passing it off to his half-blood godson and it was rightfully Draco’s to claim. 

Draco himself had said nothing as Aunt Bella raged. Potter could rot in it for all he’d cared. He had the entirety of the Malfoy Manor and fortune to his name, didn’t he? Draco scoffed at the thought from his ignorant younger self. How things have changed so quickly. Now, he never wanted to see Malfoy Manor again, much less call it _home_. 

Even if his mother had been alive, he wouldn’t have stayed there—opting instead to use their London flat for the duration of his visit. The Dark Lord and his aunt had sickened the Manor with darkness, using almost every room to carry out their sick desires. Killing Muggles and Muggle-borns in the dining room. Keeping prisoners, unwashed and starving, in the wine cellar. Letting that giant snake slither through blood along the hallways.

Torturing Granger on the drawing room floor.

Draco hissed at the unbidden memory. Now was not the time to be thinking of that particular night. He Occluded quickly, laying bricks over and over against the images in his mind. He had come here for one reason—a mission, if you would—and he was going to get this one right and then go straight back to the Reserve. That was the deal.

A few days after Draco received the Remembrance Gala invitation, Rose had found him, lost in thought and staring down the same dirt road Granger had Disapparated from. 

“You have to go back home, don’t you?” she'd asked.

Rose stood beside him, staring forward down the same lane.

He twirled his wand through his fingers absentmindedly, eyes searching the road as if it had all the answers hidden below its dirt.

“The Reserve is my home,” he finally murmured.

Rose sighed.

“No, it’s not, Draco.” She turned to face him and squeezed his arm. “You know you’ll always have a place here, but if someone back home needs you, you should go.”

He let out a scoff.

“No one needs me there.”

“What about that young woman?”

Draco’s eyes met Rose and he raised a brow.

“She isn’t anything to me.”

Rose pressed her lips together and eyes seeing right through him.

“That’s not what I saw.”

He crossed his arms and huffed a non-answer. Rose mimicked him, crossing her own and playfully nudging him with her elbow. Draco rolled his eyes at her antics and sighed. 

“Hermione Granger,” he muttered. The name felt strange on his tongue after all these years.

He hated how Rose could pull anything out of him. She knew almost everything about him now—why he had joined the Death Eaters, how good it had felt, and how his stomach had turned at the sight of his classmates' dead bodies after the Battle at Hogwarts.

How his first time speaking to a real Muggle had been at the baseball game they took him to when he arrived. How he secretly loved the sport now. 

“We were at Hogwarts together. I wasn’t...kind to her.” Draco winced. That’s putting it too nicely. “She’s a Muggle-born and I was...well.”

Rose grimaced, nodding, and Draco pushed on, unable to stop the words now that he had started.

“We have a very long, very unpleasant history. But, for some reason—” _Too good, too forgiving._ “—she came all this way to tell me that they are giving my mother an… Order of Merlin, First Class. Posthumously. And I have no idea _why_.”

“You don’t think your mother deserves it?” Rose asked.

Draco sighed and shrugged heavily.

“Yes—I—I don’t know.” 

“Did you ever talk to your mother about the War?”

He wanted desperately to Occlud, but he knew Rose would notice.

“After I was acquitted, I came straight to the States,” he explained. “I didn’t care to see my father shipped off to Azkaban again—he can rot there—and I was glad, I guess, that Mother wasn’t headed to that hell hole as well, but—I couldn’t be around her anymore.”

“Why not?”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut.

“After I failed my mission for the Dark Lord, my aunt _Crucio’d_ me for _hours_ in front of Mother and she had done _nothing_ to stop it.”

Draco’s mouth twisted and Rose put a hand over hers, smothering a gasp.

“When my aunt had me practicing the Killing Curse on rats, Mother said _nothing_. When Granger was captured and brought to the Manor, Mother _encouraged_ me to condemn her.” He sighed again. “I didn’t, but in the end, it didn’t matter. She had been tortured in front of us anyway.”

Rose grabbed Draco’s hand and he opened his eyes, prickling with unfallen tears.

“So you didn’t go back when your mother passed away,” Rose stated.

Draco Occluded then and shrugged, voice almost robotic. “I said goodbye to her before I left.”

Rose shook her head.

“Maybe if you go to this gala, you’ll get the chance to understand her better. Hear about her from another perspective.” She squeezed his hand. “And you’ll get the chance to truly say goodbye to her.”

Draco didn’t respond, already numb through his Occlumency. He pulled his hand from Rose’s grip and turned, leaving her on the dirt road.

Later that same week, Draco had been sitting at the kitchen table to write his monthly letter to Theo Nott ( _Yes, he was still alive. Yes, he was still working on the Reserve. No, he would not be coming back any time soon. Yes, he did miss him._ ) when Will tossed the Ministry-stamped envelope at him.

“Found this shoved into the bicorn’s feeding bin,” Will gruffed.

Rose stood next to him, a bundle in her hands.

“Sorry about that,” Draco replied as the envelope slid across the table and teetered on the edge. “Should’ve burned it.”

“You’re going.”

Draco sighed but didn’t look up from his parchment.

“I’m not going, Will. You need me here.”

“I don’t need shit from you, kid,” Will scoffed, crossing his arms.

Draco’s lips twitched towards a smile.

“Take a couple of months off,” he continued. “You haven’t taken a day off in the three years you’ve been here.”

“Go to the gala, Draco. Maybe take some time to see your friend,” Rose added.

He stared at his letter to Theo, quill dripping ink onto the page. Draco did miss him, actually, and he felt bad for Theo stuck on that large estate all by himself.

And there was the Order of Merlin which he hadn’t been able to get out of his head since Granger left. Why would she come all this way to tell him about it? What had his Mother done that Kingsley Shacklebolt’s Wizengamot would award it to _her_?

Draco rolled his lips between his teeth.

“Alright, fine,” he huffed. 

He would go to the Gala and accept the award for Narcissa. He had been meaning to close his parents’ accounts at Gringotts anyway. Maybe he would donate Lucius’ money to a Squib charity. Draco considered that for a moment, debating with himself on how satisfying it would be to send a letter to Azkaban informing his father of the decision.

And he would see his friend. Theo would be thrilled.

Rose smiled and opened her mouth to speak, but Draco cut her off before she got too excited.

“I’ll go, but just for a couple of months. I’ll be back in June for the start of the summer.”

“Here,” Rose pushed Will’s old dragonhide coat into his hands. “Is it colder there than here?”

Back on Grimmauld Place, Draco bit back a smile at the memory. He hadn’t wanted to tell Rose that an English winter was a mild spring compared to the biting cold of the Midwestern wind. 

He had declined to take the coat and was glad for it. Typically, he worked all through an ice storm, placing warming wards over the Grindylow pond and corralling most of the creatures back into their heated shelters. And although it was snowing heavily now, Draco's hardened skin felt it was more like a mild night in his light jumper. 

Draco pushed off the alley wall and straightened his shoulders. _Might as well get this over with._ He began walking down the street towards Granger, her face still angled towards the night sky. She had placed a white knit beanie snug over her ears, her curls exploding around the edge like it could pop off her head at any second.

His shoes shuffled soundlessly through the freshly packed snow on the sidewalk, but she must have heard him all the same. Her body snapped to face him, her hand in her coat pocket—and he suspected—gripping her wand. 

The quick reflex reminded Draco of himself when she had first arrived on the Reserve. An instinctual reaction, he guessed, she had picked up while on the run from Death Eaters and Snatchers. Draco pressed his lips into a thin line. Seventeen years old and learning how to defend themselves against dark wizards and murders. 

_We are all a little fucked up now, aren’t we, Granger?_

Draco pulled his baseball cap off so his pale hair would reflect in the front porch lights and Granger’s eyebrows raised, recognizing him, and she relaxed.

“Malfoy.” She narrowed her eyes smugly at him. “I thought you’d show up.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Still the same know-it-all swot then, I see.”

Granger’s lips pulled downwards and Draco mentally kicked himself. It was so easy for him to fall back into who he used to be around her, making fun of her.

_Not good, Draco. You left that person behind, remember?_

Yeah, but he’d left that person behind _here_ , back in the U.K., and they were apparently eager to reunite with him. Draco squared his shoulders, waiting for the typical Granger reaction to his prat-ness, but she only blinked at him.

“I guess so,” she muttered.

His brows furrowed. _What the hell was that, Granger? No yelling? No ferret insult?_

He waited for her to say more, to list the ways being a swot had saved the Wizarding World and himself more than a few times, but she only turned her head back towards the park across the street, watching as the snow fell on the fairy-lit trees. 

_What was wrong with her?_

His insult wasn’t even that good. She had dished back at worse plenty of times before and he had almost enjoyed it, matching wits, trying to best her in the past.

Unable to handle her silence, he asked, “So, why Grimmauld Place? How did you know you’d be here when I arrived?”

Granger turned to him, surprised. “You know the place?” 

He nodded and she looked up at the windows with a small smile—though, Draco noticed, her eyes didn’t quite match the gesture.

“I didn’t know I’d be here, but I’m over quite often and I live nearby.” She shrugged and returned her gaze to him. “I thought you would appreciate it more than the Leaky or the Ministry.”

“Fair enough,” he replied.

Draco could only imagine the reception he would’ve received on a Saturday night if he had been dumped right into the Leaky Cauldron.

He pulled the Ministry-stamped envelope she had given him out of his back pocket.

“So, Granger. What do I have to do for this?”

Her eyes glanced down at the envelope and, recognizing the parchment, she grinned so brightly that his breath left him with an inaudible woosh. Draco took a half step backward, his chest tightening.

If he was a different man, he’d acknowledge that her smile had literally taken his breath away. The corner of her eyes crinkled and there was a slight dimple to her cheeks. Her whole being changed. Her skin glowed golden in the streetlights. It’s no wonder those two Gryffindor idiots did everything she said.

“You don’t have to do anything, Malfoy.” Granger clapped her hands to her chest. “Harry will call you up and give you the medal. That’s all you have to do.”

Draco cringed. _Oh, that’s all. Just go up and stand in front of Merlin-knows how many people that would rather see him rotting in Azkaban next to Lucius, or dead like his mother, while Potter waxes poetic about how his mother did…_

_What exactly?_

“Right, that’s all,” he muttered, “I don’t think many are going to be happy about seeing me up there, Granger.”

Her grin dropped and it was like someone put out the street lamp above them. She scrunched her nose and frowned deeply, crossing her arms.

“We didn’t fight a fucking battle to end prejudices like _that_ ,” she snapped, “to care what a bunch of ignorant Ministry drones think.” 

_There she is._

Draco smirked as the old, self-righteous Golden Girl returned, putting him back on solid ground from her earlier acquiescence. Though, he fought back the urge to remind her that there was no “we” at the Battle. He had been one of the ignorant wizards she fought against, after all. But he didn’t think that would turn the lights back on. 

Granger seemed to have forgotten who her audience was as she continued, throwing her hands up in the air.

“It’s that kind of thinking that got us into that mess in the first place,” she ranted. “You know, we could have hired a highly-skilled wizard in the Department of Mysteries last year and they rejected Nott based on unjust claims because of who his father was when Theo had done _nothing—_ ”

Draco started. _Theo? He never mentioned he applied to the Ministry in his letters._

The pit in his stomach grew. He knew he shouldn’t have come back. What a terrible mate he has been to one of the only friends he had left, what with Goyle in Azkaban and Crabbe dead. He remained in touch with Blaise and Pansy, but there wasn’t much effort behind it on either of their parts—and if he was being honest with himself, he feared he would fall right back into the pureblood pit with them when he’d worked so hard to crawl himself out.

Theo, however, had shown up at Malfoy Manor immediately following Draco’s trial, and after a few tumblers of firewhisky Theo muttered to him that he was glad Nott Sr. was dead, Lucius was in Azkaban, and frankly, in his opinion, the blood on the grounds of Hogwarts had all looked the same to him. 

Draco had only nodded, watching the amber liquid swirl in his tumbler, the color reminding him of something he couldn’t quite place. 

“I know you’re thinking of leaving,” Theo had told him, “but you’ll always have a room at Nott Estate if you want it.”

Granger was still ranting on her soapbox when an explosion from inside Number 12 cut her off. Draco jumped, his heart racing and wand immediately in hand as he scanned the area. An old Muggle man down the street shoveling snow off his steps barely glanced their way.

Granger, however, seemed unbothered by the noise and only mildly irritated that her lecture was abruptly cut off.

“What the fuck was that?” he snapped.

His wand was still gripped tightly in his hand and he vaguely worried he’d have to fight side-by-side with Potter if they were being attacked.

“Engagement party,” Granger said dismissively as if that explained everything. “Probably another test product from Ron and George to celebrate.”

 _Ah_. _Engagement_. Draco returned his wand to his back pocket and the pit in his stomach grew wider still. 

This was—expected. Even if he still didn’t quite understand it.

Weasley was so… _slow_. Even back at Hogwarts, Draco had watched Granger dance around the ginger idiot, baffled as to the allure. Obviously, he didn’t understand how she found that red-haired, freckle-faced weasel attractive, but he wholly didn’t comprehend how she could really want someone who couldn’t keep up with her wit and intelligence.

He recalled Granger and Weasley’s screaming match outside the Yule Ball in Fourth Year. Granger snapping back at Weasley to not treat her as a last resort. Draco had overheard the commotion as Pansy tried her best to lure him into an alcove, and he found himself silently agreeing with Granger. Weasley had zero chance with any decent witch and Granger, with her cleverness and that soft blue dress draping delicately off her curves, was in a whole other league than him.

“I suppose congratulations are in order then,” he said quickly, cutting off his thoughts from drifting down that path further.

He eyed Granger’s left hand and she caught his gaze.

“Oh!” She held up her hand and waved it in front of them. “No, it’s not me. Ron and Luna just got engaged last week.”

Draco sputtered. “Weasley and _Looney_?”

“Don’t call her that!”

He held up his hands in surrender.

“Right, okay,” he drawled. “Just not the pair I pictured.”

Granger glared, but it was half-hearted, the corner of her mouth lifting even so.

“They work better than you’d expect.”

“Better than you and Weasley?”

Draco didn’t know what made him say it, but he had a sudden, burning curiosity. Was that why she was outside alone instead of in there celebrating with everyone?

“In this life,” she replied, shrugging.

Granger didn’t elaborate further and it only furthered Draco's frustrated curiosity. He didn’t understand this newfound quiet Granger. He expected to get another lecture, some long-winded explanation about the intricacies of certain couples. Usually, he couldn’t wait for her to shut up, constantly answering questions throughout class or chastising Potter in the hallway. Now, he couldn’t keep her talking.

She looked lost in thought, her eyes trained back onto the snowy park across the street. Draco was tired and trying to understand this new Granger was giving him a headache. He thought for a second to say goodbye and head out to his flat, but he realized he hadn't gotten all of his answers yet.

“Why my mother?” Draco started and Granger turned to him. “Why are you giving her an Order of Merlin?” 

Granger’s mouth twisted as if she wanted to smile or cry and she couldn’t decide which to do. 

“You really don’t know,” she stated and shook her head dismally.

_Was she pitying him?_

Draco felt like there was an accusation in her eyes and he suddenly saw red. Did she think him a bad son? As if she knew more about his family than he did. As if she knew what his parents had put him through. 

“Harry should be the one to tell you,” she said.

Draco grit his teeth. “Granger, I’m not really in the mood to talk to Potter right now, so—”

“So, I guess you’ll find out at the gala, then.” She crossed her arms and raised her chin at the sharp tone in his voice. 

“If I go,” he sneered.

She rolled her eyes, calling his bluff, and that only angered him further.

“Who would you give it to then,” he snapped, countering, “if I don’t show up?”

A movement above them caught Granger’s eye and she let out a small laugh.

A tiny head poked out between the maroon curtains in the upstairs window and a child met Draco’s eyes, tilting his little head, examining Draco closely. In a blink, the child’s hair turned from teal to a familiar shade of white-blonde.

Draco sucked in a breath, unable to tear his eyes away from the sharp curve of the child’s nose and the slight point in the chin. Matched with his own blonde hair the kid now sported, Draco could see the uncanny resemblance to the Black family, to his mother’s features.

_“Will you babysit the cubs, Draco?”_

Granger watched him, her head tilted like Teddy’s when Draco finally tore his gaze from the window. 

“She’s here too,” Granger whispered as if Andromeda Tonks née Black could hear her from inside Grimmauld Place. “Would you like to say hello?”

Draco took three steps back and quickly shoved his baseball cap back on his head, shivering at the snow melting on his scalp. In the window, an older woman with light brown hair and Narcissa’s face scooped Teddy up and shut the curtain without a glance outside.

_Speak to her? His mother’s estranged sister? The only blood family he had left?_

“And why would I want to see her?” he said, lip curling. 

Granger ground her teeth, but before she could respond he turned sharply to leave—

—and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Hold on,” Granger snapped.

Air rushed past his ears, drowning out her voice in a wind tunnel. Ice flooded his veins. A scream built in his chest. He couldn’t let it out. His throat squeezed painfully shut. 

Granger’s hand was gripped around his left forearm. A forearm covered by his sleeve and through that sleeve a dark splotch on his skin.

_The Dark Mark._

The scream in his chest was beginning to echo in his skull. 

Draco could feel the pressure of her fingers through his sleeve against the tattoo. It was on fire, burning. How could she not feel it?

The screaming grew louder and morphed into a higher pitch. Granger’s pitch. He saw her before him, in her white knit hat with a little poof on top like a tiny pygmy puff, her black wool overcoat—sensible—the same one she wore when she was on the Reserve.

She was right in front of him, holding his arm, touching the worst mistake of his life, but another Granger lay on the ground between them, writhing in pain, crying that she didn’t know anything. Looking at him from across the room with pleading eyes. 

_Help me._

Draco's wide eyes met the real Granger and his mouth twisted. She returned his gaze, her eyes still narrowed, but searching. Draco tightened his fist, stretching the muscles in his arm under her fingers. She glanced down at the movement and realization hit her face like a trainwreck. She dropped his arm, gasping as if it had burned her.

“I’m sorry, Malfoy,” she whispered.

She held the hand that touched him out before her like she didn’t know what to do with it—like she should wash it before touching anything else.

He wanted to throw something, punch something. He wanted to rip the sleeve off his shirt and dig his fingernails into his arm, ripping his skin to shreds. 

She had almost touched it with her bare hand, the mark that should have been touched by his wand the second she had been brought into Malfoy Manor. The mark that told Aunt Bella that Granger’s blood was muddy, so she dug her knife into her arm just to see.

Granger pressed her lips together, her eyes concerned, caring, as his hand covered the spot hers had just vacated.

And there it was again. _Sorry_. The word he needed to say to her, not the other way around.

“ _Don’t_ —” Draco growled.

He closed his eyes, unable to see the pity in hers anymore. His mouth was dry, but he had to say it. Make her understand. 

“Don’t— _Fuck."_ He ripped the words out of his throat, his voice low. "Don’t _ever_ apologize to me, Granger.” 

Her silence echoed around him.

 _“Do you hear me?_ ”

She nodded once, eyes wide and lips pressed shut.

Draco turned on the spot, Disapparating with a deafening crack.

* * *

“Hermione?”

She cradled her hand against her chest, warm despite the cold air. She didn’t know what to do with it. She felt like she should take it off and put it somewhere safe. It tingled, her fingers holding onto the sense memory of Draco’s muscles moving under his jumper. 

Distantly, she wondered when he had become _Draco_ to her and not _Malfoy._ Her mind also registered that all that work on the magical creature reserve did his arms _very_ well, but she pointedly was _not_ going to examine that particular thought any further at the moment.

More importantly and more immediately, Hermione was concerned. Had she hurt him by touching it? 

She didn’t know how the Dark Mark affected the wearer now that Voldemort was gone. She had assumed that it would just disappear and although she hadn’t actually _seen_ the Mark under his sleeve, it was the reason he had looked so distraught, right?

 _Unless he was just appalled at the fact that a Mudblood had deigned to touch him,_ she thought bitterly. They had just been arguing with each other after all, their faces equally screwed up in bitter annoyance. 

When she’d heard the rumors in her old department that Draco Malfoy was working on a magical creature reserve in the States, she could hardly believe it. And then seeing him on the Reserve, five years since their last encounter, gently nurturing a Hippogriff, Hermione had hoped that he would be different from his days at Hogwarts.

He had certainly looked different, trading his polished robes and dragonhide leather shoes for Muggle flannels and a baseball cap. A very _good_ different, as she had embarrassingly let slip to Theo and Ginny later over butterbeer and firewhisky at the Leaky.

But that day he had been just as standoffish and arrogant as always. As she should've expected he would be with their history.

Though, underneath all that, he had also seemed…

 _Torn_ , was the only word she could find to describe him, like he was being pulled in two different directions, battling between the gentle creature caretaker and knowing he should hate her. Between wanting Hermione to leave and needing her to explain more. She had to admit it to herself—that Draco Malfoy—made her want to know more. 

And Hermione still couldn’t believe he didn’t know anything about what his mother did for Harry. Did he never speak to her afterward? Did Draco really not know how she defied her Master by only caring for his safety, her only son’s life.

“Hermione, everything okay?” Harry asked again. 

She turned to Number 12’s open door.

“Yeah, you’ve been out here for a while. Most of the party’s gone home,” Ron said, poking his head around Harry’s. “You missed Ginny and George dueling! Before Harry threatened he would shave his beard if they didn’t end it.”

Harry held his hands up. “Look, I’m not raising my son alone if she goes to Azkaban for fratricide!”

“Yeah, right, Chosen One. Like they’d throw your wife, _my sister,_ in there,” Ron rolled his eyes and turned back inside.

Hermione dropped her hand and stretched her fingers once as the boys argued, the tingling in her hand all but disappeared.

She followed Harry up the steps and back into the warmth of Number 12, putting on a smile and forcing a small laugh as Ron rambled on, describing how Charlie held George in place while Ginny tossed a particularly nasty Bat-Bogey Hex at him.

Harry touched her arm, holding her back once Ron disappeared into the sitting room.

“Was that him?” he whispered. 

Hermione’s smile fell as she hung her coat on the hallway hook. Harry waited patiently, crossing his arms until she finally sighed, nodding once.

She already knew Harry’s opinion on the matter and after Draco’s violent reaction just now, she wasn’t in the mood to be chastised further. 

When they first received word that the Wizengamot had approved Harry’s nomination of Narcissa Malfoy for the Order of Merlin, Hermione went immediately to Harry’s office. She had been thinking about it since he had first approached Kingsley and after three months waiting for the court’s approval, her resolve was as unbreakable as steel: Draco deserved to know and deserved the chance to accept the honor on his mother’s behalf. 

Harry had protested, of course, falling prey to his instinct to distrust Draco’s every move. He covered it by claiming that he already talked to Andromeda who would accept it and, besides, no one knew where Malfoy was, but Hermione was stubborn—and having worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures before becoming Deputy Head of the DMLE, she had heard a rumor as to where he was hiding out. 

Harry had agreed to notify Draco in the end, claiming that sending one owl couldn’t hurt. What he didn’t find out until she returned, was that Hermione never intended to just send an owl.

Harry had been furious when she returned home, fretting over her and grilling her for every detail, short of pulling her memories out of her head and watching them in his Pensieve.

After assuring him that Draco did not harm her, and he had only been standoffish, but as civil as one could be with their history, did Harry back off. 

“But,” he had stated, “I really doubt he will come.”

Hermione made to move around Harry and rejoin the party, but he blocked her path.

“Was he an arsehole to you again?” Harry ran a hand through his hair. “Seriously, I don’t know why you thought it was a good idea to invite him, Hermione.”

“Harry. C’mon,” she whispered, as she stepped around him. “You said it yourself at his trial. There’s something different about him now.”

As she re-entered the sitting room, Hermione heard Harry grumble behind her.

“Doesn’t make him any less of a prat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops--posted early. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ The next posting will be Monday, Sept. 21. Unless my hand slips again.
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> Waiting for the Snow | Of Monsters and Men  
> White Blank Page | Mumford and Sons  
> You are a Tourist | Death Cab for Cutie


	3. Brightest Witch of Her Age

#### June 1998 | Ministry of Magic

Flashing bulbs blinded Draco as he pushed open the doors of the courtroom and entered the black marble hallway. The long stretch before him was lined with reporters and photographers, calling his name, shouting at him to give them a quote and he scowled, shielding his eyes against the bursts. 

The elevators stood at the very opposite end of the hall, a treacherously long trek if he was going to make it without hexing a single reporter. His hand itched for his wand as he debated if it would be enough to change the Wizengamot’s mind and send him to Azkaban for attacking Skeeter.

Merlin, but if it were. 

He had been ready for that prison, resigned to his fate. He knew that all he had done over the past two years was as unforgivable as the curses he had cast. He would follow Lucius right into that dark place, as they both deserved.

What else was there for him out in the world, anyway? How could Draco really go about his life with everyone knowing it was _his_ fault Dumbledore died, that _he_ was the reason Death Eaters took reign over their children at Hogwarts?

But, once again, _Saint-fucking-Potter_ and his _Gryffindor Princess_ had to come to the _fucking_ rescue. 

Potter told the entire court how Draco had lowered his wand as he faced Dumbledore. How he couldn’t do the deed. Draco’s scowl had deepened behind the bars of the cage he’d sat in. He hadn’t known Potter had been there on the Astronomy Tower, a witness to his greatest failure. 

And then there was Granger. Buck-toothed, bushy-haired, know-it-all Granger.

As she had approached the stand, he’d been unable to look up, staring straight ahead at the stone floor, not even daring to blink as she gave her testimony. Her voice had that same stubborn, unyielding edge, delivering her statement as confidently as she had recited passages from potions textbooks in class.

Potter had been a waste of time defending him. Nothing Granger could say would convince the Wizengamot to let him go free. Not after what she had suffered in his home.

Draco had begun Occluding as she started her defense.

“Draco Malfoy saved us that night.” 

Granger’s voice shattered the bricks in his mind, echoing against the black stone walls of the courtroom.

 _Saved them?_ He had looked up then and met Granger’s eyes, but she had already been staring right at him as she delivered her testimony, her gaze piercing.

“He refused to name us to his parents and Bellatrix.”

Granger had said his aunt’s name with ease. As if she hadn’t withered under the force of that crazy bitch’s wand for hours.

“He turned away. By not naming us, Lucius could not call Voldemort to the Manor. By turning away, he bought us precious time to escape. Without his help, I don’t know if Harry would be alive today.”

_Help? Damn it, Granger, I hadn’t done any of that to help you!_

He had been terrified. He had been _scared out of his fucking mind_. And he had only been hesitating, unable to make a decision. Did he call the Dark Lord and Potter would end it right then and there? Or did he risk Voldemort killing Potter that minute and living in this nightmarish world forever?

After Granger’s testimony and a brief recess, the Wizengamot had determined Draco innocent, claiming he was underaged when he took the Dark Mark, coerced by ignorance and fear to save his own life and the lives of his parents.

All true, but Draco didn’t feel so innocent.

Up until the point he raised his wand to Dumbledore’s face he had been a willing participant. A recruit, eager to show his worth to the ranks. He had held his arm out excitedly to receive that black tattoo, now faded to an ashy gray. He was guilty.

But now he was freed.

Draco was only glad, he supposed, that his mother had been spared Azkaban as well, but he had hoped his own imprisonment would spare him from ever having to see either of his parents. What Potter said to release Narcissa from all charges, he didn’t know, having been barred from the proceedings in a holding cell.

More flashbulbs burst in Draco’s eyes, stars dancing in his vision and blurring the elevator doors in the distance.

_Let’s get this over with._

He squared his shoulders, and adopting the aloof, cold Malfoy mask he knew well, began his trek through the masses.

Aurors held back the reporters as they clamored towards him. 

“Draco!”

“Mr. Malfoy!”

“Will you visit your father?”

Draco’s footsteps stuttered and the sneer on his face fell as he caught his reflection in a camera’s flash lamp. A spitting image of Lucius. His eyes hardened as he dropped the austere facade.

Why visit his father in Azkaban when he could just look in a mirror? 

He resumed his trek, finally reaching the elevator doors where promptly froze in his tracks, one hand raised for the call button. 

The doors were already open.

He raised his eyes slowly, scanning the warm caramel skin of the arm propped against the elevator gate. The ends of long, chocolate hair curling around the elbow. Granger gave him a hesitant smile as his gray eyes met her amber ones. She stepped back and to the side, giving him space to enter the elevator car.

He glowered and considered for a moment turning around and finding a different elevator bank, but the reporters’ calls reached his ears as they crowded around him, spotting Granger through the doors.

“Miss Granger!”

“Hermione!”

“Why did you defend him?” 

“Mr. Malfoy! Would you say you and Miss Granger are friends now?”

Draco clenched his fists and stormed into the elevator, slamming the gate closed against the reporters’ cries and jamming the Atrium button. The elevator stuttered to a start and Granger braced one hand against the wall opposite to him, steadying herself.

It was only as the normally speeding car seemed to move at a glacial pace that he realized he had chosen being stuck in an elevator with his childhood victim over listening to any infernal reporters. He didn’t know if he’d made the right choice. 

Granger herself was silent. He peeked at her out of the corner of his eyes and realized that she was watching him, her jaw moving, her eyes contemplative.

“I’m glad you and your mother were acquitted,” she finally said. 

His eyes shot forward and burned into the door grate. The lights on the buttons seemed to flicker slowly through the levels even as he held onto the railing of the speeding car. Draco bit his cheek, trying to keep his mouth shut, but old habits died hard and he couldn’t let Granger have the only word.

“And I bet next you’re _bleeding Gryffindor heart,”_ he spat out, “will say that you’re sorry to hear about my father’s life sentence?” His voice was ice.

Through the door’s metallic distorted reflection, he saw Granger lift her chin.

“No.” Her voice was stone. 

He expected her to say more, after all, she had mountains of material to throw at him about Lucius: he was evil, a blood-purist, a coward, despicable, the worst father in the Muggle and Wizarding world combined, but she didn’t say anything more. He turned to face her and she returned his gaze, raising her chin just slightly more, baiting him to snap back.

But he had nothing. 

Everything said and unsaid between them at that moment was true and he was _tired_. He could throw a curse back at her, insult her last-season robes, call her a Mudblood—but he was scouring that word from his brain. What was the point anymore? They’d lost and he didn’t think he believed in that blood-status shite anymore. 

Draco had worked his _fucking arse_ off at school, under Lucius’ watchful eyes, to beat Granger in marks. Especially in Potions. But he was only ever just standing on her heels.

He had enough reason even then to acknowledge that she was a fucking wizarding prodigy. Granger was brilliant, not even he could deny that. She was a Muggle-born and she bested him and his pureblood family at every turn.

He saw her fight at Hogwarts too, saw her stand up to his crazy aunt, saw her bleed red on the floor of his home. The blood dripping from Granger’s arm that night was the same color that dripped from Draco’s head as he slumped outside the come-and-go room, the same color that dripped from the gash in Goyle’s arm.

Everything he had believed. It was all bullshit. And he was _tired_.

He gave Granger a curt nod and tore his eyes from hers, turning front as the elevator reached the Ministry Atrium. 

“By the way.” The outer doors opened. “Happy birthday, Draco.” 

His hand slipped from the gate handle as Granger whispered his given name. 

He was frozen. The soothing elevator voice announcing they’d reached the Atrium was at war with the waves crashing in his brain. Draco fought against himself to turn and meet her gaze again, and it was the sight of his mother through the bars that shocked him back to life. 

Without a glance back at Granger, Draco shoved the gate open and bolted out of the elevator. 

Narcissa waited just by the fountain for him, dressed in black robes with an oversized sun hat and sunglasses on indoors—as if she could hide who she was. Draco didn’t spare her a glance as he stormed past her to the Floos, grabbing a handful of powder and barely spitting “Malfoy Manor” out between his clenched teeth.

He needed to leave. Tonight. He needed to get out of Britain altogether. He needed to never see the Manor, to hear from his parents, to cross paths with anyone who knew him ever again.

The green flames whirled around him as a plan formed in his head. All he needed was an International Portkey.

* * *

#### March 2003 | Covent Garden, London

Draco lurched from his bed, wand in hand, as a scream left his room like smoke.

Chest pounding, he sucked in gasps as his brain registered his surroundings: Dark gray walls covered by black bookshelves spilling over with tomes, an emerald green throw blanket kicked to the foot of his white duvet cover, the sliding door to his ensuite, the blue flannel shirt he wore the night before thrown across a chair. 

No pictures of friends or family graced his bedroom walls. Nothing of sentimental value except one dark blue Milwaukee Brewers pennant pinned above the chair, given to him by Rose after his first Muggle baseball game along with the cap he’s worn every day since.

He was in his London flat, he reminded himself. Not the Manor. It was just another nightmare.

Draco groaned. Leaning his elbows on the tops of his knees, he clutched his head in his hands and pulled at his sleep-mussed hair. Images flashed before his eyes: deep purple walls, black coiled hair, amber eyes pleading at him.

Every night for the past two weeks since Granger grabbed his arm outside Number 12 Grimmauld Place, he had been having the same nightmare over and over again. The same one he thought he had cleared his mind of after starting work on the Reserve: Granger’s body contorting on the drawing room floor under Bellatrix’s wand, her arm bleeding, _M_ _udblood_ already scaring from the cursed blade.

His nightmares were always of the same night, even if the events varied. 

Most frequently it was just a memory, the night playing out exactly as it had. In others Bellatrix’s face dissolved, morphing into his own as he leaned over Granger, pointing his wand at her, _Crucio-ing_ her again and again. In other variations, he pressed his wand to his tattoo and called the Dark Lord to Malfoy Manor. Granger dies instantly.

But, the worst version is the one where he saves her.

Stunning Bellatrix and Lucius, grabbing Granger, clutching her body against his as he Disapparates away. That version mocks him, reminding him of the coward he is.

Draco combed his fingers through his hair and looked at the clock ticking beside his bed. It was six in the morning and he’d only just drifted off to a restless sleep at three.

He sighed and shoved the covers off. It was early, but the Apothecary would be open by the time he showered, drank some coffee, and Apparated to Diagon Alley. He would need to brew some Dreamless Sleep if he wanted to get any rest while he was back here.

* * *

#### March 2003 | Diagon Alley

Glass jars glinted on the shelves in the late dawn sun shining through the windows of the Diagon Alley Apothecary. 

Hermione stood in the furthest aisle of the mostly empty shop at this early hour, for which she was grateful, as she was spending an inordinate amount of time choosing her next item. 

She pursed her lips and shifted her weight from foot to foot as she debated on the jarred crocodile heart before her. Her basket, which held sprigs of lavender, a bag of peppermint, various powders, and a stopper of Hellebore, shifted on the ledge against her hip.

She picked up the jar of crocodile heart, debating on if it would react negatively to the Unicorn horn.

Somewhere at the front of the shop, the bell above the door jingled. 

She set the heart back down, sighing. Maybe she should just go with the Valerian root, she thought, but no, she wanted to calm her mind and the tremors in her body, not be a walking zombie.

She sighed again and picked up the jarred heart once more. 

“I wouldn’t add that. It won’t react well to the powdered Unicorn horn.”

An embarrassing peep left Hermione, the jar dangerously close to slipping from her shaky grip.

Taking a deep breath, she placed the jar, a little too roughly back on the shelf, glass clinking together, and turned to face Draco. She saw the end of a wince leaving his eyes.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Draco muttered and gestured to the items in her basket. “You’re combining a Calming Draught with a Draught of Peace, yes?”

Hermione could only nod, intrigued that he could pick that out from the common potions ingredients she held.

And she was surprised, after his reaction two weeks ago, after grabbing him, that he would even approach her. 

She glanced down at his left arm, covered, as she knew it would be by his jacket sleeve.

Draco was still wearing Muggle clothes, instead of robes or what had been the usual pretentious suits from their childhood. Black field jacket, unzipped over a gray t-shirt, and black denim pants. His worn and faded baseball cap, navy blue with a white and gold _M_ over a spray of golden wheat, covered his white-blonde hair. 

She had been right in her descriptions to Theo and Ginny after she returned for the States. He wore Muggle clothes very well.

Draco cleared his throat, turning slightly and moving his arm out of her eyesight. Hermione’s eyes shot back up to his and she felt her face grow hot at being caught gawking. At his scar. At him.

“You won’t need the crocodile heart,” he said lightly as if he hadn’t just caught her staring at his body. He pushed his hands in his jacket pockets. “Make sure you add the lavender last though.”

Hermione tilted her head, observing him. His voice sounded pleasant like he’d encountered an old friend on the street, but his face looked strained, a thin-lipped smile pasted on, and he fidgeted under her scrutiny.

It was only when he continued nervously that she realized she still hadn’t spoken a word to him yet.

“I’ve…” He stuttered and lifted his hand to his cap, tugging on the brim, “I’ve made it before. Took me a few tries to get it right, but if you stir only clockwise fourteen times, it’ll stop them.” He nodded at her trembling hands.

That got Hermione’s focus back. She pulled her fingers into a fist and crossed her arms to hide the tremors she’d woken with again that morning. 

“You’ve made it before?” she asked, cagily.

She was embarrassed he’d seen it, a weakness in her. Hermione didn’t believe he was being cruel, but she was still Hermione and he was still Malfoy. She didn’t want to give him any reason to look down on her. See her as less.

“I get them sometimes too.”

She let out a small breath at the admission and glanced down at his hands shoved in his pockets, but if they trembled below the fabric, she didn’t see. 

Did he get them too? The shakes and headaches? The tightness in her chest? It was especially bad after a nightmare or the sight of long, curly black hair in a crowd, but sometimes, if she was too stressed at work or anxious about an upcoming speech, they’d appear unbidden. The after-effects of suffering from prolonged Cruciatus Curse.

_And he got them too?_

She wanted to—well, she didn’t know what she wanted to do. Tell him she’s sorry? She didn’t think he’d like that after the last time he spoke to her, outside Grimmauld Place. Wrap her arms around him and tell him it’s alright? She startled herself at that thought. 

Finally, Hermione settled with a quiet, “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well,” he stated, “just because I was her nephew didn’t mean I was saved from her moods.” Draco’s gray eyes had darkened to ash.

Hermione bit back a gasp. _She_ Cruciated him? His own aunt? Hermione knew Bellatrix was psychotic but to torture her own family? She had just figured—she didn’t know what she figured—someone else had done it? Dolohov? He had seemed like the type.

She couldn’t stop the words as they tumbled out of her lips.

“Malfoy, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t.” Draco held a hand up and cut her off, but his voice was acres softer than it had been a fortnight ago. He pressed his lips back into that strained smile. “You’re not allowed to, remember?

It was a poor attempt at friendly humor and, conflicting with how they left each other two weeks ago, she felt like she had been _Stupefied_.

Draco’s eyes flicked between hers. Cautious, hesitant, apologetic.

He was trying to say sorry, she realized, to make up for his outburst the other night with civil conversation and a bad inside joke. She could almost laugh. Malfoy and Granger sharing a joke instead of insults. Draco looked as discomfited with the idea as she did. The thought comforted her somehow.

Hermione eyed his own basket hovering behind him, cataloging the ingredients.

“Dreamless Sleep?” She accepted his apology. “Put a few drops of it in chamomile tea before bed. You’ll wake up without the fogginess.”

Draco’s shoulders relaxed. His strained smile eased into a grin as his eyes brightened to silver in the rising sun through the windows. He nodded at her, a silent thanks, and stepped out of the aisle, gesturing _after you_. 

And Hermione felt like she’d been _Stupefied_ again. 

Angry Malfoy she knew. Arrogant Malfoy she recognized. Indifferent Malfoy she could handle. 

Relaxed _Draco?_ Effortlessly attractive Draco with a lazy grin that her eyes mapped to memorize? _He_ was uncharted territory, an unopened book. And Hermione _needed to learn more._

She wet her lips, hiding her own smile, and Draco’s eyes darkened as he watched. She felt her stomach flip as his eyes traced over her. 

Hermione grabbed her basket, quickly moving to the front of the store, uncomfortable under his close stare. He took a deep breath as she passed him and she wondered how long their tentative peace would last before he found something that reminded him he hated her.

At the counter, she purchased her items and stepped back to wait by the door for Draco. _Wait for Malfoy?_ But it felt rude to Hermione for her to just leave without saying goodbye. She chewed on her lip. _He’d_ been rude to _her_ more than once in her life. Cruel even. What was leaving without a “goodbye” to a blood slur?

She watched Draco as he finished purchasing his items, mouth pressed again into that thin smile when the shop owner thanked him. The one Hermione had noticed earlier, pasted on his lips as if he was attempting to replicate a friendly gesture he’d seen someone else use more genuinely once before. 

Her brain whirled, taking in her observations and cataloging them away in her mind. She was cracking the spine open on a new book titled, _Draco Malfoy: Attractive Creature Caretaker and Baseball Fan,_ and she was greedily devouring its contents.

Draco shrunk his packages and met Hermione at the door, pushing it open and gesturing again for her to go first.

 _Pureblood manners,_ she thought, annotating on the margins of the book in her mind, _or newly learned Midwestern politeness?_

She stepped out of the shop and into the morning light, Diagon Alley still quiet with only a few early-risers like themselves about, and walked with Draco. Neither broke away from their path together, but they didn’t speak to each other either. Hermione kept her eyes on the ground, biting her lip against filling the silence and breaking whatever hesitant acceptance Draco felt around her.

Hermione was not stupid. She knew that her endless list of facts and answers were annoying to most. She’d known that she had talked too much, that her classmates groaned as she raised her hand for the thousandth time. She knew that her friends’ eyes glazed over as she prattled on about the history of a Charm. But when Hermione wasn’t reading or studying, she’d needed to fill silences and drown out her ever-racing mind. And the best way she’d known how was to rattle on about one of the hundreds of facts she’d kept stored in there.

But ever since the dust of the battle cleared, the silence that surrounded had only mocked her. Reminded her of all the information she held that hadn’t saved her loved ones. That hadn’t returned her to her parents. 

It begged her now to fill the air as it grew more awkward around the unlikely pair. But her lips refused to move. The name of the inventor of Dreamless Sleep was on the edge of her tongue, the potioneer’s entire history on a scroll in her mind. 

_Still the same know-it-all swot, I see._

It wasn’t his cruelest statement and it was mostly true, but the idea of Draco insulting her again was not why Hermione had bit her tongue. 

She didn’t _want_ to be the same know-it-all swot. 

_Brightest Witch of her Age._

It had been repeated to her over and over again throughout her time at Hogwarts. And what good had it done? She had researched, she had read, she had excelled, and she had solved every puzzle that Dumbledore and Voldemort threw at them. But Harry still walked into that forest to sacrifice himself. Fred still died. Remus and Tonks. Colin Creevy. Lavender. Snape. Dumbledore. What good had her endless knowledge and swotty prattling got them in the end? What was the point of being known as Hermione Granger, Brightest Witch of her Age when Harry had still felt he had to die to save them? When her own parents didn’t recognize her face?

Her war hero status was undeserved, and although Ron and Harry had used it to their advantage, fast-tracking through the Auror program, Hermione had actively sought employment low enough in the Ministry that she’d have to work her way up to the DMLE, just as she should’ve done if she’d only gone through Hogwarts as Hermione Granger, full stop.

She hadn’t wanted any fame; she never asked for it. She only ever wanted her best friend to be safe, and for her to be seen as equal to all the witches and wizards who got to grow up in the world she fell in love with at the age of eleven. Her skills at magic to be seen as of equal value to her hard work and studying. Not despite her blood status or because she was Harry’s best friend.

Lost in her thoughts, Hermione almost missed it when Draco stopped before the Leaky Cauldron. Turning on her heel, she faced him, a question on her tongue, but the look on his face made her pause.

It seems he had been wrestling with something in his mind during their walk too, she thought. His hands were shoved deep in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched forward and brows furrowed.

After a moment, Draco sighed and took his baseball cap off, squeezing it between his hands.

“I wanted to…” He paused, rolling his lips between his teeth. 

Hermione tilted her head and frowned. He wanted to—what? She hoped he wasn’t apologizing for what happened two weeks ago. _She_ had grabbed _him_ after all and she had felt awful about it since. He’d snapped at her, sure, but she still didn’t know if she’d hurt him by grabbing his Mark. 

She opened her mouth to tell him just that when he cut her off.

“I wanted to—thank you,” he continued, wringing his baseball cap in his hands on the last two words, “for speaking at my trial.”

 _Oh._ Hermione had not been expecting that. 

Their terse acceptance of each other in the Ministry elevator five years ago was more than what she had expected to receive from him for that. 

“I don’t believe I actually said that to you that day—so—thank you.” 

Draco’s shoulders were so pushed forward that Hermione was reminded of the armadillo she once saw at the London Zoo. If he could’ve physically done it, she thought Draco might roll into himself too.

“You don’t need to thank me, Malfoy,” Hermione replied. _Really. Don’t. You like you’re in pain._ She smirked as she finished with “Coming to the gala will be thanks enough.” 

Draco glowered, but she could tell his heart wasn’t really into it as a grin threatened to escape.

“Okay, Granger,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Alright. I’ll be there, yeah?”

“Good,” she said and feeling confident that he hadn’t gotten upset at her tease she pushed further. “Think of it like a coming out into society party. Purebloods still do those, right?”

She ran a hand through her hair, combing her curls over one shoulder and Draco’s eyes narrowed, following her fingers through her hair as one snagged in a curl. She quickly dropped her hand and winced as it pulled on the knot.

Did she push him too far with that pureblood comment? Was he going to make fun of her bushy, tangly hair like he used to? She held her breath.

But before Draco could get a chance to—or not to—they were interrupted.

“ _Death Eater!_ ”

A middle-aged wizard walked past them, having just exited the Leaky, his face twisted in fury at the sight of Draco’s uncovered pale hair.

“You don’t belong here! You should be rotting with your father in Azkaban.”

Hermione watched the exchange as if in slow motion, the wizard spitting at Draco’s feet. Her mouth twisted in rage and her face burned red hot.

The wizard had already passed them by the time she hit normal speed, but that didn’t deter her outrage.

“ _Excuse me?_ How dare you!” she screamed at him.

The wizard turned, his eyes wide at the sight of Hermione stepping out from behind Draco’s profile.

“You’re disgusting!” 

Draco winced and in the back of her mind she realized _he_ had spit at _her_ after the battle at Hogwarts, but she was too far gone in her temper to feel awkward about the unintended insinuation. 

“He has every right to be here! People _died_ to end this kind of bigotry!” she raged, “You’re acting no better than they had!” 

The wizard hurried away as Hermione stepped around Draco, but that wouldn’t do. This man had to listen to her. She felt a lecture swirl in her brain, her mind’s quill drafting meters of parchment. It raced with facts, numbers, history. We, as a community, had to work together to rebuild, not fall back onto past mistakes. The War was over, the fighting done. Don’t spit and walk away. Talk. _Learn._

Hermione felt like she was back at Hogwarts, Pansy Parkinson telling her she would never measure up. She felt like she was facing down Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries. She felt like she was in Third Year, racing towards a smug-face, blonde-haired boy, hand raised.

“Get back here, I’m not finished talking to you!”

She raised her wand, to do what she didn’t know, the rational part of her mind suppressed by a growing fire—

A hand caught her wrist in a swift grip. 

Hermione whipped around at the culprit, eyes sparking. 

“Granger, stop.” Draco held her wrist in his hand. He’d look on the verge of laughter if his eyes weren’t so wide in shock at her outburst. “He’s not worth it.”

An embarrassing giggle jolted from Hermione’s lips, Draco echoing the exact words Ron had said just before she slapped him in Third Year. 

She shook her head and took a few deep breaths, dousing the fire in her mind. Draco’s grip on her wrist loosened, only letting go once her hand and wand were back down at her side. He chuckled once, letting go, and her cheeks reddened again, this time not in anger, as she felt his fingers drifting off the skin of her wrist.

“Right. Sor—” Hermione pursed her lips and Draco smirked. “Well, you don’t want me to say ‘sorry’ and I’m not sorry anyway. He shouldn’t have done that. It was an awful thing to say.”

Draco frowned. He shook out his baseball cap and tugged it on, back to front, over his white-blonde head. He pulled the brim down low. 

“It’s fine, Granger,” he said. “Can’t hide who I am here.”

Hermione felt that fire build again, something she hadn’t felt in years. Not since Hogwarts. Not since the Battle ended. 

“It’s not fine! It was ignorant. He was wrong—”

“He’s right,” Draco cut her off, his voice suddenly detached. “Thank you for speaking at my trial, but I should’ve been sent to Azkaban with Lucius.”

Hermione’s face hardened. She could name a few reasons why that wasn’t true. In fact, she had and she’d given them to Harry and Kingsley before Draco’s trial.

She tried to catch his eyes, but they looked past her shoulder, glazed over. She wondered if he was Occluding. Harry had never been any good at it, but Narcissa must have been an expert.

“You shouldn’t be judged by the sins of your father,” Hermione replied.

She sighed and pushed back the passion roiling in her body, just as she did a lot lately.

The War was over, the fighting done.

And she was so tired of the fighting. So exhausted. She spent seven years fighting for equality, for change, and yet there was still so much more to do. Little changes and ideas met with resistance every step of the way when so many had sacrificed so much already.

Draco’s eyes were a milky gray under the brim of his cap as they slowly traveled back to meet hers.

“Maybe not,” he said, “But I have plenty of my own.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keeping to a posting schedule? Don't know her.  
> At least I'm posting early and not late. Can't promise I will always do this, but I think I've found a better schedule for myself of posting a chapter every Saturday. Plus, I needed the distraction of editing this after the news about RBG yesterday. RIP that powerhouse of a woman. Hermione would have loved you.
> 
> Next chapter will be posted on Saturday, 9/26.
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> The Camper Velorium II: Backend of Forever | Coheed and Cambria  
> Slow and Steady | Of Monsters and Men  
> Life in the City | The Lumineers


	4. G.R.A.W.P

#### May 1998 | Hogwarts

“She saved my life, you know. Narcissa.” 

Harry lowered himself to the ground next to Hermione who had been sitting cross-legged against a fallen pillar for the past hour.

The Great Hall was emotional chaos. Groups were bent, crying over their dead loved ones. Others were playing with Grawp through the window, trying to find some levity now that the fight was over.

Hermione didn’t know what to feel. There was relief. Exhaustion. Sadness. A little bit of fear and despair lingering too despite her best friend sitting alive and safe beside her.

She had moved gently away from Ron and the Weasleys, giving them space as they mourned their son and brother. She didn’t know how to help them, hadn’t read a book on grieving. She hadn’t prepared for this part of the war. 

But she knew she wouldn’t go unnoticed for very long and, sure enough, Harry had extricated himself from Ginny and found Hermione in her corner where her eyes had fallen on the Malfoy family near the grand Hall doors.

Lucius sat on a bench, unmoving, unblinking. He didn’t seem to fully be there, whether it's because he couldn’t believe that he had lost or he was contemplating his inevitable fate in Azkaban.

Hermione, normally against such disparaging thoughts, couldn’t stop bitterly hoping he would be locked up for good.

Narcissa sat beside her husband, her wand healing minor cuts and bruises on his arm as she whispered to him.

“What do you mean?” Hermione looked away from the blonde couple and faced her friend.

Harry told her then how he had walked into the forest, ready to sacrifice himself. How the Killing Curse must have destroyed the Horcrux in his scar. How Narcissa volunteered to check that Harry was truly dead, whispering in his ear, asking if her son was safe, before lying straight to the Dark Lord’s face.

Hermione turned wide-eyed from Harry’s tale back to Narcissa, her mind unable to connect her with the woman who encouraged her son to condemn Hermione to death at the Manor last month. It was not a memory she particularly wanted to revisit, but images flashed through her brain of Narcissa’s panicked face, her knuckles white around Malfoy’s arms as Bellatrix ordered him to take care of the dead Snatchers.

And she recalled just moments ago. It had been difficult to focus on anything other than Harry’s body hanging limply in Hagrid’s arms, her body screaming to run across the courtyard to him, but she had noticed a flash of long blonde hair step up beside Hagrid and the tears of relief in Narcissa’s eyes as she spotted Malfoy stepping out of the doors of the castle, her hands clasped over her mouth as Voldemort began to speak.

“She must love her family a lot,” Hermione murmured, her brows furrowing as her eyes finally turned to Narcissa’s son. 

Malfoy had his back against the wall on Narcissa’s other side, his steel eyes observing the Great Hall as Hermione’s had. 

“A mother’s love saved me again,” Harry said flatly, but Hermione caught a lift to his lips out of the corner of her eyes.

Hermione felt a sudden wave of sympathy as she observed Malfoy. There was a looseness in his eyes that she had never seen before—almost relief. His feet, though, were pointed towards the doors as if he couldn’t wait to throw himself out of them. He never spared a glance for his parents, his body turned away. If his gaze happened to land on his father during a cursory scan of the Hall, his lips would twist in disgust, a look which Hermione had thought Malfoy had saved just for her.

A group of Healers across the way lifted two stretchers and the Great Hall hushed as they marched towards the doors. Malfoy lifted his head and sucked in a sharp breath as the stretchers passed underneath his nose, his eyes fixed on the cold bodies of Colin Creevey and Lavender Brown. He pressed his lips together and sagged back against the wall, lowering his head into his hands. Narcissa reached for her son, but Malfoy flinched away from her touch, bolting out of the Great Hall and disappearing around the corner. 

Two Aurors near the doors tracked Malfoy’s departure, eyes narrowing, and Hermione suddenly gasped as she realized. 

Reaching over Harry’s crisscrossed legs, she ripped open the side of his jacket opposite to her. 

“Hermione!” Harry tried to wriggle out of her grasp. “What are you doing?” he whispered, glancing around to see if any of the grieving masses had noticed her erratic behavior.

She shoved her hand down the inside of Harry’s jacket pocket. 

“Narcissa has her wand.” 

She grasped ten inches of hawthorn wood and pulled it out, quickly dropping it within her beaded bag.

“So?” Harry smoothed his clothes back down and shot Hermione an exasperated look. 

“So,” she shot back. “That means that Malfoy just left the Great Hall and is now wandering Hogwarts—wandless—with a bunch of Aurors patrolling the place.”

Harry’s eyes widened at Hermione as she stood up and brushed the dust off her jeans.

“And you want to arm him?” he hissed. 

Rolling her eyes, Hermione pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder “It’s _his_ wand, Harry. And you have yours back. Plus, you just told me that the Malfoys defied Voldemort. He’s not dangerous.”

“I said _Narcissa_ did! I didn’t say anything about _him_!” Harry hissed at her retreating back, but she was too far through the crowd to hear him, following Malfoy’s path out of the castle. 

Hermione reached the bottom of the boathouse steps just as Malfoy spat wetly onto the rocks below them, clearing his mouth of the remaining sick. He leaned between two posts of the railing, his normally pale face green, and wiped the back of his hand against his mouth. 

“You’ll probably want to clean yourself up with this,” Hermione said, stepping forward and opening her beaded bag.

Malfoy’s eyes shot open and he spun around, panic written on the twist of his mouth. She was close enough now to reach out and grab him, but she only searched through her magically expanded bag. She could see him gripping desperately at his pockets, his mouth tightening as they came up empty.

“So, they’ve sent you to finish the job, eh Granger?” he growled instead.

Hermione rolled her eyes and ignored him, still searching.

“And where’s Potter? _Savior of our world_ ,” he sneered. “I’m surprised he didn’t want to be the one to do it. He’s quite good at cutting me to pieces, you know.”

Hermione huffed as the vials in her bag fell and crashed against one another. She'd actually chewed Harry out for the Sectumsempra incident, not that Malfoy would be at all appreciative.

And then:

“Bet you love this, _Mudblood_.” 

He spat. Wet hitting the toe of her sneaker, mixing with the blood and dirt already staining the fabric. 

She paused in her search and sighed at the splatter; the exhaustion of the previous day suddenly settling heavily on her shoulders.

 _What were you expecting, Hermione?_ _Voldemort dies and he suddenly gets a lobotomy?_

She pulled the hawthorn wand out of her bag and held it out towards him, handle first.

“Just take it,” she commanded, weary.

Malfoy sucked in a sharp breath. His hands twitched for his wand, but he didn’t move, his eyes calculating, debating on if it was a trick. She raised her brow and held both of her arms out just slightly from her body, letting him see that she didn’t have her wand on her person. In fact, it was also somewhere deep in her bag. 

Malfoy remained frozen and Hermione was losing her patience. With a sigh, she reached forward and took his hand, shoving the wand into his palm. 

He hissed and tugged away from her sharply, taking the familiar wood with him, and rolled it through his fingers. Instantly, the tension in his eyes eased and his shoulders dropped.

“You should have that back.”

Malfoy looked up at her then, eyes wide in disbelief. 

“Sorry, it’s no Elder Wand.” 

Hermione threw him a smirk and climbed back up the stairs towards the Great Hall.

* * *

Draco watched as Granger reached the top step, his hand tingling as his wand settled on his palm. The familiar springy wood and unicorn hair core filled his arm with a warmth he hadn’t realized he missed so much.

It was then, as Granger’s brown mane disappeared across the courtyard, that he realized she had stood inches before him, unarmed and no way to protect herself. She'd turned her back to his outstretched wand. He wondered if that registered on her at all. It must have. She noticed everything. 

Draco stepped forward, one foot about to hit the landing when he saw the remnants of his spit congealing where Granger had stood. A burn rose to his cheeks. She gave him back his magic and he had spit at her. _Fucking Gryffindor..._ He felt shame burn in his stomach at the sight of the darkened wood.

He pointed his wand down at the landing and cast a wordless _Scourgify._ As he watched the stain wipe away as easily as it appeared, he wished could go back and do the same to the slur that had preceded it. He’d scour it from his brain if he had to.

* * *

#### March 2003 | Near Knockturn Alley

Diagon Alley was busy that Sunday afternoon. It was the first truly warm day since spring started to peek its head through winter, and although the sun was still hidden by clouds, witches and wizards were out in droves. 

The Leaky Cauldron had been packed when Draco entered from the Muggle London side. He'd walked quickly through the pub to the disguised Alley doorway, cursing the warmer weather that didn’t require the extra layer of anonymity his field jacket collar usually provided him.

In a feeble attempt at disguise, he'd pulled his baseball cap down further over his blonde hair as, behind the bar, a Hufflepuff he’d recognized from his year watched him a little too close.

The crowd, however, had died down the closer he'd gotten to Knockturn Alley. People were still wary of that area despite the Ministry crackdown on selling dark artifacts and Archie’s Pub was the least patronized lunch spot due to its proximity. It was also, apparently, a favorite of Theo’s. Draco ducked quickly inside.

Theo Nott folded down the top of his _Daily Prophet_ as Draco slid into the booth opposite him. 

“Well, if it isn’t you.” 

Theo’s smarmy voice both annoyed Draco and filled him with comfort. He had really missed this bastard.

“Hello, Theo,” Draco drawled, reaching over and grabbing a slice of toast off his mate’s plate. “You’re still reading that drivel?”

“I work for this drivel,” Theo replied. He half-heartedly smacked Draco’s hand away from his plate. 

Draco raised both eyebrows and continued munching on Theo’s toast. 

“One of the quidditch writers is a Muggle-born,” Theo explained, “and has taken it upon herself to introduce more Muggle sports into the section. You know... _inclusivity_ and all that.” He gave an exaggerated eye-roll. “They’ve hired me to pick up the Quidditch slack.”

“Far cry from the Department of Mysteries,” murmured Draco. 

Theo narrowed his gaze. 

“How did you know about that—?” He stopped short and smirked. Opening the paper he had set aside, Theo handed it to Draco. “Actually, I know exactly who’s told you.”

Draco raised a brow and took the paper, grip tightening and wrinkling the thin sheet as he saw Theo’s evidence.

There in the Society section. A small photo, but who could miss it? Draco and Granger outside the Leaky Cauldron, Hermione grinning at him through her teasing remark and his eyes intently on her. An image that would be most gossip-worthy to almost every single person who knew them. And at this point, almost everyone knew of them.

The moving photo looped; Granger ran her hand through her hair and Draco followed her fingers’ path through her riotous curls. 

The back of Draco’s neck heated as he watched his photo-self stare unabashedly at her and the same thought that ran through his head that day came to him again: were they as soft as they looked?

He had been surprised to see Granger in the Apothecary that morning, feeling like the world was having a good laugh at him for constantly putting her in his path lately. But, he had resolved in that moment to make up for the way he left Grimmauld Place.

Because there she had been, picking up ingredients for the exact potion he had once created himself. A combined potion to stop the uncontrollable shakes and anxiety-ridden headaches from prolonged Cruciatus Curses. 

Draco had wanted to kick himself even more. Of course, she would need that. Of course, he wasn’t the only one who was internally scarred by his aunt. And there he had been, losing his control at Granger for only touching _fabric_ on his arm.

He had been embarrassed—was embarrassed—for being so weak as to fall apart in front of her at just her hand touching his Mark. Not even touching his Mark. 

“So why are you back home?” Theo asked, tearing Draco’s eyes away from the photo of Granger.

Draco wished everyone would stop calling it that. This wasn’t his home anymore. His home was woods and cornfields and prairies. It was home-cooked meals, sports on the TV, and terrible beer.

He sighed.

“There’s a gala in May. May second,” Draco replied. 

Theo _mmm’d_ as he shoveled more eggs into his mouth.

“They’re giving out Orders of Merlin and _Saint Potter_ ,” he sneered, “has apparently nominated Narcissa for one.”

Theo dropped his fork and let out a breath like he was punched in the gut. He sat back against the booth, arms folded. 

“Wow,” he breathed. “For what?”

Draco shrugged and poured himself some tea. _Good question, mate._

“And you’re going?” Theo asked, skeptically. 

Draco shrugged again but didn’t answer. 

“How did you find out?” Theo pressed. “My owls barely reach you all the way in the States and I know you avoid the _Prophet_ if you get it.” 

Draco’s eyes unwittingly flicked to the _Prophet_ photo over the top of his mug, the Society pages still open on the table beside them and blurry through the steam rising from his cup.

He took a long sip of his tea, ignoring the growing smirk on his friend’s lips. 

“Ah,” Theo hummed.

He refilled his own mug and stirred in a spoonful of honey, the metal clinking delicately against the porcelain.

“Does she still look good in blue?” he asked, blowing gently on his tea.

Draco’s mug hit the table hard and he glared at Theo who was very focused on taking the most gentle sip of his drink.

He should never have said anything about Granger’s Yule Ball dress to Theo. It had given the dark-haired boy too many false ideas. It had just been a passing, drunken thought in fourteen-year-old Draco’s mind that blue made her look less disgusting, and maybe if she wore it more often, boys would actually notice her. Ever since that night, Draco had resolved to never drink so much firewhisky with Theo ever again.

“Theo, I will _Avada_ you right here—”

“Now, now, Draco,” Theo murmured and wagged one finger. “There are eyes and ears following ex-Death Eaters everywhere.”

Draco bit his tongue and furtively eyed the group at the bar. Their backs were to the pair in the booth, but Draco had seen them throw nervous glances at him when he had first sat down.

“I’m only trying to get a rise out of you. Relax, Draco,” Theo laughed. “But you do look quite enraptured in that photo. If one didn’t know you, one may think you were nervous.”

Draco wanted to curse the knowing smile off of Theo’s lips. 

“Yes, well, she continues to get the better of me,” Draco grumbled, scowling. 

He and Granger had parted ways not long after his pitiful “thank you” and the incident with the old wizard. Draco had been blown aside by the fervor with which she’d yelled after that man. Hermione Granger defending Draco Malfoy of all people. _Again_. How many times was enough for her? How many times would he be reminded he wasn’t worth the spit the wizard had wasted?

Theo knew when he’d won a teasing, and much to Draco’s relief dropped the subject. 

They continued their meal, catching up with each other’s lives—how Draco liked living and working on the Reserve. How Theo has been experimenting in his spare time, despite not getting the DoM position. 

The lunch crowd cleared and Theo downed the dregs of his tea.

“Listen, I’ve got to get back to work,” he said, gathering his things, “But I’ve got two tickets to a Quidditch match coming up. Why don’t you come with me?”

“I don’t know, mate,” Draco said, biting his cheek. “I’m trying to stay out of the way while I’m here.”

“Oh c’mon,” Theo pushed. “You can’t stay holed up in your flat ‘til June. It’s in a private box, so you won’t be out with the plebians.”

Draco chewed on his cheek, considering, and finally agreed. The last sporting event he’d gone to was a Brewers’ game, the Reserve not being anywhere near a local Quidditch team, and he’d miss the excitement of a match.

Theo clapped a hand on his shoulder with a promise to owl him the details later and sped out the door.

* * *

#### March 2003 | Gringotts Bank

Draco moved swiftly through Diagon Alley, keeping his eyes focused on his target while avoiding anyone who looked too closely at him.

Turning a corner, Gringotts appeared at a crossroads and Draco slipped quickly inside, sighing in relief that he’d decided to stop in during a workday. The bank was mercifully empty, no one inside except a couple of goblins and a lanky man with dark hair pulled back into a bun.

Draco hunched his shoulders and focused on being invisible as he stepped up behind the man and waited his turn with the goblin.

“You’re not still giving me a hard time about that, are you Gornuk?” The dark-haired man laughed.

Draco started at the voice. The goblin hopped off his stool and walked around the desk, the man turning in place to follow him.

He almost didn’t recognize The-Boy-Who-Lived as Potter’s face came into Draco’s view. A close-cropped beard covered the lower half of his face, but his green eyes were full of mirth behind the signature round glasses.

“Mr. Potter,” Gornuk chastised, his screech increasing in decibels as he listed, “You impersonated Mrs. Lestrange, _Imperio’d_ a Gringotts employee, released our security dragon, and rode it through our glass ceiling!”

Potter grinned. “First of all, Hermione was the one who impersonated Bellatrix, and second of all, I defeated Voldemort the very next month, so really, you could say your dragon helped me win.”

Draco simultaneously wanted to retch at Potter’s unending cockiness and interrogate him for more information. 

_Granger, did what?_

His aunt had thought the trio had stolen the Sword of Gryffindor from her Gringotts vault and she had tortured Granger because of it. And now, Draco is being told, Granger had suffered multiple rounds of the Cruciatus Curse and a cursed blade in her arm only to then impersonate her torturer and do just as she was accused.

The— what did Will always say?— the balls Granger had.

Gornuk narrowed his eyes at Potter and looked past him to Draco whose mind was still reeling, piecing together the timeline in his head.

“I’ll be right with you, Mr. Malfoy, after I deal with Mr. Potter here.”

Draco cursed inwardly. He should’ve known a fucking baseball cap wouldn’t hide his identity from a goblin. Gornuk marched into the back and disappeared.

“It’s been a while since I heard someone say that. Malfoy.” Potter nodded. He paused, just for a moment, before extending his hand out towards Draco. 

Draco stared at the hand, thrown back in time to a moment long ago when his own was held out, waiting. A friendship requested and quickly denied. Draco considered following in Potter’s footsteps, but he could tell by the pressed lips of his childhood foe that it’s exactly what Potter was expecting of him. And Draco was not that eleven-year-old anymore.

He reached forward and gripped Potter’s hand in his own, shaking it firmly. Up—down. Rewriting the path that was expected of him.

Draco thought there should be an earthquake, some sort of shattering explosion after the gesture, but he only felt lighter.

“Did Granger really impersonate my aunt?” The words spilled out of Draco’s mouth before he could stop them.

Potter lifted a brow. “Uh, yeah she did,” he replied, “Polyjuice. She—Bellatrix—had a Horcrux in her vault.”

Malfoy remembered little about the Horcrux story, but that wasn’t what he was currently focused on.

“Polyjuice?”

“Yeah, she had a hair on her jacket from—well, after, you know—the Manor.”

Draco chewed on that for a moment, trying to imagine where they had been, what it had been like after Potter wrestled the wands from Draco’s hands, Weasley grabbed an unconscious Granger, and Dobby had Disapparated them away. 

Knowing what it felt like after his own round of Aunt Bella’s _Crucio_ , he didn’t imagine it was good. To go almost immediately from that to putting on Bellatrix’s skin? Draco shuttered.

“She is quite strong. Granger,” he murmured.

Potter considered him for a moment before he replied, “You have no idea.”

Gornuk returned from the back and addressed Potter first.

“We’ll have those files for you in a moment, Mr. Potter.” The goblin then turned to Draco. “Mr. Malfoy.”

He bowed and Draco cringed.

“Draco,” he said, quickly. “Or just Malfoy. I don’t care. Anything, but that.”

Potter leaned against the front of an empty desk and suppressed a laugh.

“Certainly, uh, Malfoy,” Gornuk replied. “How can I help you?”

“I’d like to close my parents’ vaults.”

“Of—of course,” the goblin replied, hesitantly, “I can transfer your mother’s to your own—but your father is still alive—”

Draco took a deep breath and mustered whatever Malfoy pride he could as he cut off the goblin.

“My father,” he sneered, “is currently serving a life sentence in Azkaban. Do you really think he’s coming back for that money?”

The goblin stepped back at Draco’s sharp tone and bowed low again.

“Of course, sir. My apologies. I can transfer that money to your vault—”

“No,” Draco cut him off sharply once again. “I don’t want it. Give it away. To charity. I don’t care.”

Potter’s eyebrows raised and Gornuk wrung his hands together, looking past Draco nervously as if Lucius himself was about to Apparate inside Gringotts.

“To what… charity… should I send it, sir?”

Draco’s temper was growing the more he had to have this conversation in front of Potter. He saw out of the corner of his eyes as the bespectacled man, leaning against the desk and pretending not to listen, gazed firmly on the dirt under his fingernails.

“I don’t know,” Draco growled, exasperated. “Give it to the giants for all I care.”

Gornuk brightened. “Certainly, certainly, sir,” he said, turning to scamper up to his high desk. He pulled a quill and parchment forward and wrote excitedly. “GRAWP would benefit greatly from this sizable donation. Miss Granger would be most pleased!”

Draco started. “GRAWP?” he asked. _Granger?_

“G.R.A.W.P.,” Potter listed from his perch. “‘Giants Reserve and Welfare Protection.’ Hermione created it when she worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”

“Precisely, precisely,” Gornuk muttered as he scribbled away at his parchment.

With a tap of his hand against the page, the parchment glowed green. He turned it towards Draco and held out his quill.

“Just sign here and it will all transfer over within a couple of months.”

Draco took the quill hesitantly. He hadn’t known what he was doing when he snidely suggested donating his father’s vault to a charity for giants. He bit his cheek and thought. This was Granger’s foundation apparently. Another spew, or whatever she’d called that. Did Draco really want to be tied to Granger more than he already was during his visit by signing off on this?

 _Yes_. The answer surprised him with how quickly it appeared. 

He had just been thinking that he _did_ want to apologize to her— _needed_ to—but the most he had been able to utter was a “thank you” for speaking at his trial. A trial that he’d wished she hadn’t defended him during in the first place. 

If he couldn’t speak the words, actually say _I’m sorry for all the cruelty my family and I put you through_ , then maybe he could put it into action instead. He quickly signed the parchment before he could change his mind and set the quill down firmly on the desk.

Gornuk smiled and rolled up the parchment as another goblin exited out of the backroom and handed Potter a roll of parchments. 

“Thank you both for your patronage,” Gornuk said and dismissed the two wizards with a wave.

Draco turned towards the front doors and Potter pushed himself off the desk, shoving the parchments into the inner pocket of his Auror robes. Together, awkwardly, they exited Gringotts.

Stepping through the doors, Draco stopped short, having run directly into the witch who had just held his thoughts moments ago. His hands shot out, instinctively grabbing Granger’s shoulders, steadying himself and her as she rocked back on her heels in shock.

“Sor—Oh!” She squeaked and covered it with a nervous laugh. “It’s you! I won’t say ‘sorry’ then.” 

Granger grinned as she had at Grimmauld Place, and just like then, the air in Draco’s lungs left him at the sight.

“That’s a little rude, Hermione,” Potter teased, breaking Draco’s mesmerized stare. 

Potter stepped around him in the doorway and stood behind Granger whose shoulders were still inexplicably in his hands. Draco quickly dropped them and cleared his throat, stepping out of the way of the Gringotts doorway. His hands tingled where they had touched her and he shoved them deep into his jeans pockets.

From just behind Granger on the street, Potter’s eyes narrowed at Draco and he got the sense that the Auror was monitoring his body language like he was in an interrogation room. Like in Sixth Year. Draco narrowed his eyes at him in return but made sure his face betrayed nothing else, pulling up a light wall of Occlumency.

_Habits die hard, eh Potter?_

Granger laughed once, light and quick.

“No, Malfoy and I have a deal, you see, Harry. We don’t say that word to each other.”

The sound of her laugh had almost cracked his Occlusion, but what she said shattered them. His face twisted as he went through multiple emotions at once, self-loathing winning out as his lips turned down.

 _That’s not true, Granger,_ he thought, _I just don’t have the fucking courage to say it to you._

“You both had business at the Bank today?” Granger asked. 

She removed her light jacket and draped the blue fabric over both of her arms, pushing the long sleeves of her white button-up blouse to her elbows. The sun had finally come out in the cloudy sky, heating the air throughout the narrow streets. Draco could feel sweat gathering under his own flannel sleeves, and he itched to roll them up as he typically did back home at the Reserve. There no one cared about the ash-faded tattoo that would be exposed.

“Yes,” Draco replied, adjusting his navy cap. “Just closing some old accounts.” 

Potter raised one eyebrow and Draco prayed to Merlin that he would keep his mouth shut about the immeasurable donation he’d just made. But the Auror said nothing, only maintaining his dissecting, bespectacled gaze on Draco.

“Well, I hope people aren’t being unkind this time,” she told Draco, shooting a look towards an innocent bystander.

Draco bit back a grin as the witch Granger glared at did a double-take, looking thoroughly confused as to why she drew the Golden Girl’s ire.

“Don’t worry about it, Granger,” he replied. Draco rocked back on his feet, shrugging. “Like I said. Hard to hide who I am here.”

“I don’t know,” Potter finally spoke, smirking. “Almost fooled me. Baseball hat and Muggle clothes? You look like my cousin.” 

Granger dug her elbow sharply into Potter’s stomach and he let out a soft _oof_.

Draco scowled. He wore a solid forest green flannel shirt and dark wash jeans. His favorite. He’d gotten so used to the comfortable—practical—working clothes he wore on the Reserve that he thought nothing of it when getting ready for the day. 

No matter—the less he looked like a Malfoy, the better. It’s why the navy blue and gold cap covered his head as if with a Permanent Sticking Charm. Plus, it had always felt better to see the reflection of a happy memory on his head rather than the image of his disappointing father staring back at him.

“No use wasting galleons on new clothes,” Draco sneered back. “I’ll be returning to the Reserve soon enough.”

“Right,” Potter said, rolling his eyes. “Because you clearly have too little to waste. Do you even need the money from working on this farm?”

“Harry!” Granger hissed and shot a look at him over his shoulder, but Potter barely acknowledged her.

His eyes remained fixed on Draco’s as if waiting for him to make the first move, to throw a curse, give him an excuse to claim that Draco would only ever be the cruel child they knew in their youth. 

Draco bit his tongue and took a deep breath, laying one brick down over the other in his mind. He didn’t employ his Occlumency heavily, but just enough that the anger that roiled in his stomach abated.

“Will and Rose feed me, house me, and yes, even pay me as they can, in exchange for my labor on the _Reserve,_ ” Draco emphasized the last word harshly.

Despite the tenor of anger in his voice, he couldn’t help a corner of his mouth twisting upward at the mention of his found family. It’d only been a few weeks, but he was missing them fiercely.

“I think that’s more than enough for them having given me a home and a purpose.”

“And it’s a beautiful home at that!” Granger raised her voice and not-so-subtly shoved Potter back two paces with her elbow. She shot him another dirty look over her shoulder and turned back to Draco. “They sound like lovely people. I’m sorry I missed them when I was there.”

Draco’s eyes softened unconsciously at Granger’s words. The thought of her meeting Rose, of the two of them matching wits, teasing Draco, made him bite back a grin. Will and Granger fawning over the slew of Kneazles that roamed the clearing, debating the rights of House-Elves around the fire-pit, had him biting his cheek to stop the stupid smile that threatened to break across his face.

And within that same moment, a stone dropped into the yearning pit of his stomach.

The sun, which had disappeared behind a thick cloud, returned again, shining down on the three outside Gringotts. Granger shifted her jacket, from over one arm to the other, and ran her newly freed hand through her hair, brushing the mass of it off her neck. 

_Mudblood_. The white scar’s letters glistened against her forearm’s hazelnut skin in the sunlight as she combed her fingers through her hair. 

A couple of days ago, he had watched her do the same movement. Intently. Now, he couldn’t look away fast enough. He sucked in a breath and the bricks that had lain loosely in his mind shot down against each other hard enough they became one huge, unbreaking wall. 

_Mudblood._ He had scoured that word from his brain. Just as he’d said he would. He had cast a _Scourgify_ directly at the word in his mind.

But there it was in front of him, shining in the sunlight, cursed, impossible to erase. And as if it was nothing to her.

In the span of five seconds, he’d gone from biting back a stupid smile to swallowing against the bile in his throat. He forced more bricks down, the Occlusion laying over his mind in a thick fog.

Granger’s eyes had returned to Draco at the sound of his intaken breath, her fingers absentmindedly wrestling with a knot in her curls.

“You okay, Malfoy?”

Her voice sounded kilometers away. Potter stood steps behind her, arms crossed and waiting for her to be ready to go. But at Granger’s question, his eyes flicked back to Draco, recognition filling his eyes and somewhere deep— _deep_ —in the fog, Draco recalled that Snape once taught Potter Occlumency just as he had him.

“I have to go.” 

The voice came from somewhere. It sounded like himself, but Draco hadn’t felt his lips move. He turned and began walking to the Apparition point a few shops down. From somewhere, a far way off, Granger’s voice called to him. 

With a crack, Draco Apparated into his flat and collapsed onto an armchair.

Exhausted, he let the bricks fall and the fog cleared, rushing out of his body as if someone had opened a window in his brain. It was the hardest—and fastest—he’d Occluded since his aunt and the Dark Lord slept just steps away from him.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and pressed the heel of his hands into his eye sockets. The image of the scar flashed through his mind. _Mudblood_. He dragged his hands down his face and groaned into his palm, biting down on the flesh. 

It was the first time he’d seen the wound since his aunt dragged her cursed knife across Granger’s arm. He didn’t expect—what didn't he expect? For the bile that rose in his throat at the sight? The shame to fill him from head to toe that he’d stood by and done nothing as her piercing scream permeated the room while she bled on his floor? 

_Really, Malfoy,_ he thought, _what the fuck did you expect?_

He sighed. He hadn’t expected her to wear it so easily. 

She hadn’t been hiding her scar as he did his. She didn’t suffer through the heat of the day, unlike Draco, sweating through his shirt at the fear of rolling up his sleeves and all of Diagon Alley seeing the faded snake and skull. 

Instead, Granger went about her day, pushing up her sleeves, waving her arms, combing through the knots in her hair—evidence that she had survived fearlessly on display on her otherwise flawless skin.

Draco pulled his hands from his eyes as stars began to dance in his vision. He blinked, clearing his eyes, and saw before him a copy of the day’s Daily Prophet rolled in twine on the coffee table, brought in by an owl this morning before he’d left. 

He reached down, unfurled the paper, and opened to the society pages. There, the moving photograph of Granger and himself looped endlessly. Her covered arm playing with her curls. Himself watching, wondering.

He remembered what Potter told the goblin at Gringotts. 

Draco traced his wand around the photograph, cutting it neatly from the paper. 

How Granger had, after receiving that cursed scar, donned the skin of her torturer and essentially saved the Wizarding World—five years ago exactly, in fact.

Draco lifted the photograph from the paper and watched it loop again.

He couldn’t imagine the strength it had taken. It was certainly a strength he didn’t have.

Draco folded the photograph and took off his cap, tucking the folded paper snugly into the top. He placed a sticking charm on it to be safe and returned the cap to his head.

If Granger had the strength to do all that and not hide the scars she gained because of it, then he would at least find the courage to say the words he couldn’t bring himself to utter to her. 

_I’m sorry._

Eventually. Soon. At some point.

His father’s voice came to Draco suddenly, sneering. _That Granger girl beat you in marks again?_ Always just behind her. Only ever just standing on her heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just under the wire. 😬 Thank you, thank you for reading and for all the kudos and comments! I so loved getting to develop my own Theo for this fic, and I hope those eagerly awaiting his entrance enjoy this chapter.
> 
> Next update: Sat. 10/3
> 
> Also, THANK YOU for all the love to my one-shot [Give It Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26591917)! I really did not expect so much love for something I had just needed to write for my own therapy. 
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> Thousand Eyes | Of Monsters and Men  
> Different Names for the Same Thing | Death Cab for Cutie  
> Gun Song | The Lumineers (I know. Again. But it's Draco's anthem for the story).


	5. Harpies

#### April 2003 | Dorset

It was Saturday afternoon in Dorset and the gargantuan stone and steel stadium was buzzing with the excitement of hundreds of witches and wizards. Draco followed Theo closely as he wove through the crowd, grateful that despite not having known what Quidditch teams were playing when they Disapparated from his flat, it turned out to be mainly Puddlemere United fans. 

Draco had safely opted for neutral colors—a plain black long-sleeve shirt and his usual jeans—but his Milwaukee Brewers cap helped him blend in with a majority of the fans even so. As long as they didn’t look too closely at it.

As they entered the monolithic stadium, Theo turned down a mostly deserted corridor, away from the electrified crowd and concession kiosks. Finally, Theo stopped before a locked side door in the stone and exclaimed, “Here we are!”

“Do you really have tickets to a box,” Draco asked, narrowing his eyes at the unmarked door, “or are we sneaking in again?”

Theo gasped and put a hand on his chest. 

“I’d never! Now, give me your arm.” 

He pulled two green wristbands—marked with the word _guest—_ out of his pocket and grabbed Draco’s right hand. Theo held the band over Draco’s arm and he watched as it slithered around his wrist, locking into place. Theo did the same for himself with the second band and put his hand on the doorknob, the lock clicking instantly and letting the pair through.

They climbed what seemed to be hundreds of steps until they reached the top of the stairwell and walked through another set of doors into a richly carpeted hallway, intersected with doors to private boxes and windows showing views of the entire stadium. Draco ambled after Theo, marveling at the sights outside as they passed.

They were at the very top of the stadium at one corner of the Quidditch pitch. Through the windows, Draco could see the entire pitch from corner to corner, a junior Quidditch team zoomed across the stadium, warming up the crowd with a friendly match, and the crowd roared with cheers, already amped up for the day’s events. Giddy excitement-filled Draco’s chest at the sounds and sights. He’d never admit it to Theo, but these were good seats and Draco was very glad he’d come. He’d had no idea how much he’d truly missed this sport.

“Found it.” 

Theo stopped once more in front of a door—except this one was marked. _Potter and friends_ , the placard read.

“Theo…” Draco growled lowly, turning to his unaffected friend.

“Ah, so you see, this is why I didn’t tell you about the match before we left,” Theo said. “It’s the Holyhead Harpies versus Puddlemere United.”

“Theo, I hardly think the teams playing is the issue here,” Draco replied, a note of warning in his voice.

Theo ignored his tone and sighed as if explaining this to Draco was the most tiring task he’d had to do all week. 

“Ginny Potter is the Harpies’ top chaser. Really? You never once read the Quidditch section in the States?”

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose, the green guest band swinging mockingly by his eyes. The crowd roared again and he ached to turn and see what had happened on the pitch. 

“And, pray-tell,” he asked, “how the hell you got tickets to the She-Weasel’s box?”

“Well, it’s Potter now, so I guess—She-Potter?” Draco glared at Theo, who dropped his grin and sighed again. “We’re kind of friends. And I may be allowing her to butter me up so I’ll help her get a job as a Quidditch reporter at the _Prophet_ in a couple of seasons.”

“Define ‘kind of’.”

“We go for drinks every now and then.”

Draco shook his head, unbelievingly. “And Potter and all his war hero mates are just okay with this?”

This time Theo glared at Draco. 

“If you’re implying that they shouldn’t be friends with me just because of who my father was, then you can go straight back to Wis-go-son, you hypocritical arsehole,” he said, voice low.

Draco’s neck burned. Theo was right, that was incredibly unfair—unkind—of him to say. Draco’s streak of being a good friend just keeps going down, it seems. 

Theo had done nothing in the War. His father was one of the nastiest Death Eater’s Draco ever knew, but Theo had, by some miracle, stayed as far away from that initiation as possible. Even so, he was still paying the price—getting rejected by jobs based on his name, avoiding the public eye. Who was Draco to deny him the progress he’d made to ingratiate himself back into the public’s graces?

“It’s Wisconsin,” he muttered and Theo rolled his eyes. Draco let out a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Theo. You’re right. I’m glad Weasley— _Ginny_ invites you, but I just don’t know how gracious they’ll be towards your guest today.” 

“Ah, it’s fine,” Theo said, waving a hand, “I cleared it with Ginny. She said if Hermione’s cool with you, then she’s also cool with you.”

Theo turned and pushed open the door to the private box, but Draco’s feet were frozen in their spot. 

Granger is— _cool_ —with him? 

The idea that Granger spoke anything positive about him to her friends gave him a weird feeling in his chest. It had been a couple of weeks since he fled from the sight of her scar outside Gringotts. He hadn’t thought their recent interactions had particularly warmed her to him in any way.

He rubbed at his chest and unstuck his feet, following Theo through the door before he lost all his nerve.

The stadium’s speakers sounded with fanfare and the previously cleared field burst with color as the Holyhead Harpies zipped from their tunnel into the air, circling the entire stadium and spiraling through the sky. The fans cheered and stamped their feet, so loud that Draco wondered if his estimate of the size of Puddlemere fans outside had been wrong.

“GO HARPIES! _GO GINNY!_ ” 

Potter stood at the edge of the box, almost falling out of it as he cheered and waved a green and gold scarf over his head. Draco was shocked and a little spitefully amused to see the famous Gryffindor so covered in emerald—green and gold sweatband around the crown of his head, green t-shirt, even some sort of green straps wrapped around his back as if he was wearing a backpack on his chest. 

Potter turned profile as he cheered, following the ginger blur of his wife as she sped past the box, and Draco discovered it wasn’t a backpack, but a baby carrier. A little dark-haired infant sat snugly inside, facing out and waving his arms back and forth. 

Draco bit back a laugh at the sight of the Boy-Who-Lived now a domestic man. He’d figured that Potter would have married the Weasley girl, but Draco had always thought of him as a dark wizard hunter, an Auror, constantly saving the world with his arrogance and immortality. The Quidditch husband and Dad-Potter was not an image Draco had put thought towards.

Theo stepped up beside Potter at the front of the box, clapping him on the shoulder, and Draco narrowed his eyes as they shook hands like old friends. He hesitantly took a few steps forward and wondered if Theo’s “every-now-and-then” was a little more _every_ as he watched the exchange from under the brim of his cap. 

Draco only lifted his head when he heard his name.

“Ginny said you’re bringing Malfoy today,” Potter said, he turned and spotted Draco a few paces behind him.

“Yup!” Theo replied, throwing an arm over Draco’s shoulders. He cringed. _Way to lay it on thick, mate_. “I thought this grump needed to have some fun.”

“What’s _he_ doing here?”

Draco held his breath as Ron Weasley walked past him to Potter’s side, covered in as much Harpies green as his friend. His shoulder knocked Draco roughly and he bit the inside of his cheek hard before his tongue could betray Theo’s trust with a sharp response.

“I invited him,” his sister called out from the front of the box. Ginny hovered on her broom just along the box’s ledge, cropped hair blowing away from her face. “And you’ll be civil, Ronald, or I’ll revoke your wristband.”

Weasley’s mouth dropped open and he began to sputter.

“I mean it, Ron! You start a fight in my box _again_ and the press will be all over it,” Ginny warned.

Theo winced and Draco felt his anger boil. He wondered why the new Potter hadn’t warned _him_ to be nice. Draco was going to fight Weasley right now if he found out the ginger fool had laid even a finger on Theo before. 

Weasley grumbled and shot Draco a dirty look, but he moved to the other edge of the box and stood beside his brother. Draco tried to remember this one’s name. It was the twin. George? He tried not to think of why the other twin wasn’t there.

“By the way, thanks for the support, ferret!” Ginny said and tossed Draco a green and yellow scarf. 

He glanced up at the Puddlemere navy of his cap and smirked. “No problem, weasel.”

“Ha!” Ginny exclaimed and threw him a grin as she swung her broom around to the center of the pitch. 

Draco placed the scarf over his shoulders.

At the whistle, the match began. The quaffle tossed up and Ginny took possession easily, flying down the pitch.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Draco saw Potter dissecting him again, taking in each minute movement of his body. After a moment, he held out his hand, just like at Gringotts. And just like before Draco moved slowly—as if it was a trick. He shook it once. Up. Down. 

“Enjoy the match, Malfoy.”

“Thanks, Potter.”

“Well, now! Isn’t this nice?” Theo clapped his hands together and Draco barely restrained himself from hexing him. “Now, that we’re all mates, I’m going to grab us some butterbeer. One for you too, James?” 

The baby wiggled in his harness in response. 

A choked note of panic left Draco’s throat as Theo quickly slipped out the box door before he could follow, leaving him alone in the lion’s den.

On the pitch, the Quidditch players sped around the stadium, passing the quaffle and narrowly missing bludgers. Inside the box, Draco shifted awkwardly from foot to foot next to his childhood arch-nemesis.

After what felt like days of silence, Potter finally spoke. 

“I apologize for the way I acted the other day,” he said, turning from the match and again to Draco. James comically _oooo’d_ as he was swung around again. 

Draco nodded, lips rolled between his teeth. 

“I was surprised you actually donated that money to Hermione’s foundation. I talked to her and—” 

Potter must have read the panic in Draco’s eyes because he lifted his hands, palms forward in reassurance. James pulled on his fingers. 

“—I didn’t tell her about the donation. She had just talked about how you were different. At least, not as you were in school. And I shouldn’t ‘interrogate you like a criminal.’ Her words, not mine.” He paused briefly and then, “It seems you are different. And if Hermione and Theo think you’re okay, then I’m okay.”

Habits truly do die hard, and the anger that roiled in his stomach from Potter’s words threatened to destroy whatever tentative acceptance had just happened. Draco smothered it as best he could. He didn’t want to ruin Theo’s goodwill as much as he wanted to punch the arrogant smile off the Chosen One’s face.

“Thank you, oh gracious Savior.” 

He couldn’t help a little snark falling through though.

Potter only chuckled in response. “Yeah, I guess I deserve that.”

They turned back to the match, watching silently for a few moments, but the words Draco had been biting back finally tumbled out.

“Is she—Granger here?” Draco bit his cheek. 

“Yeah,” Potter replied, smirking. “She’s over there.”

He pointed over Draco’s shoulder to the back corner of the box where—and only with her could Draco believe it—Granger sat in a green Harpies jumper with her feet up on the seat in front of her and a book propped open across her denim-covered thighs while over a thousand fans thundered around her. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, but curls escaped around her face as she absentmindedly twirled them around her finger. 

A Puddlemere beater suddenly stopped short before the box, whacking a bludger back into the pitch as the Weasley brothers shouted and heckled. 

Granger turned a page.

“She does that every game,” Potter said.

“I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised,” Draco muttered. 

Potter guffawed and his son clapped his own meaty hands, giggling. 

“Last month,” Theo said, appearing behind Draco and pushing a butterbeer into his chest, “a player crashed into the box—I’m talking tumbled head over heels into the seats next to her—nothing! She didn’t look up once!” 

Draco took the butterbeer from Theo before it spilled all over his shirt, wondering if his friend snuck a couple of firewhisky shots on the way back up. 

Potter laughed. “That’s nothing! Last year, Smith looped…”

Draco zoned out the sounds of Potter and Theo trading Quidditch stories as he watched Granger. She never looked up once at the match. Only adjusting her posture or resting her head in her other hand.

She brushed an escaped curl behind her ear, sighing as she turned the page, and Draco’s feet moved of their own accord, propelling him forward until suddenly he was standing before her.

His shadow fell over her page and her mouth immediately dropped into an annoyed frown at the offending darkness. A look so fucking adorable to Draco he wanted to laugh. 

_Adorable?_ No, not adorable. Classically, swotty Granger whose pinched face and frown would appear in the library any time he and his mates were making too much noise. Draco dug his fingers into his palm until his nails pinched. _That’s better._

She looked up at the cause of the shadow and as her eyes landed on Draco her face brightened, lips stretching into that particular grin that was quickly becoming his favorite. He dug his nails in further.

“Theo said you might be here.” She pulled down the seat beside her and patted it. 

Before he’d registered he had, Draco sat—

And he froze. His fist was pressed so tight now he wouldn’t be surprised if there were crescent moons of blood on his palm.

The underside of her opposite arm was resting on her propped up leg, holding her book open. _Mudblood_.

Granger’s grin faltered as he stared at the white scar against her dark skin, breathing slowly, pushing aside the self-repulsion and the memories of the night before when his nightmare turned to the version where _he_ was the one carving the slur into her arm. She cleared her throat self-consciously and dropped her arm to her side. She shook her jumper sleeve loose to her wrist and Draco felt his fist relax, nails pulling from the meat of his palm.

_Fuck._

“Good-book?” he asked, the words tumbling out so quickly they meshed together. His voice cracked like he was twelve years old again. _Pathetic, mate._

He felt _The Daily Prophet_ photograph rustle against his hair in his cap and he tried to remember what he told himself the night he placed it there: she had the strength to wear her scar, unbothered. 

And in one petrified glance, he’d made her feel embarrassed for it. He deserved whatever self-inflicted wound was on his palm now.

She shrugged and showed him the title: _Magical Law and Its Writers_. 

“It’s quite dry—even for me.”

“I’m sure the match is more entertaining than that.”

She rolled her eyes. 

“When you’ve seen one Quidditch match, you've seen them all.”

Draco leaned back, scars and nightmares suddenly forgotten, as his brain tried to translate what she’d just said. 

“Granger,” he replied, appalled, “I thought you were far too intelligent to say something so… fucking ridiculous. Plus it’s virtually impossible to have seen them all—”

She scowled and he bit his tongue, worried for a second she’d storm away as he’d essentially just called her stupid.

“And how—pray tell—is that impossible?” Her challenge had a bite to it, but her amber eyes, mercifully, betrayed amusement. 

He leaned forward, relaxing into her challenge.

“There are seven flyers on each team,” he stated, “That’s fourteen players to a match with countless maneuvers, plays, and tricks for each one to pull.”

“I know how to count, Malfoy—”

“That’s not even to speak of the pitch, which they have full access to—ground and air. Or even the snitch, which could be _anywhere_ —inside or outside—the stadium.” 

As he spoke, his voice rose with passion, grounded in his love for this magical sport. Originally, he had joined the Slytherin team to best Potter and win the approval of his father, but as the years went on Draco began to realize he’d never see pride in Lucius’ eyes, and soon flying became an escape for him, a welcome outlet to the growing tension created from his parent’s expectations. 

The desire, however, to best smug, perfect Potter would never end up disappearing.

“These teams could play for hours,” Draco continued, impassioned, “sometimes days—sometimes _seconds_ —before the snitch is caught. There is _no way_ you’ve seen the same old Quidditch match before.”

Granger’s eyes flicked between his own as he finished his lecture. Her lips pressed together to hide his favorite grin and he realized that during his tirade he had pushed forward into her space, leaning on the armrest between them. She let out a breath of laughter that brushed against his lips and he wet them instinctually, tasting it. 

“Maybe you should have my wristband,” she murmured, raising her arm where a gold band encircled it. 

Draco tore his eyes from her lips and looked down at the band around her wrist, reading the printed letters: _full pass_. He swallowed and slowly sat back against his seat, shaking his head. It was already absurd they’d allowed him in their box as a guest.

“Why do you come then,” he asked and gestured to her book, “if you clearly have no interest in Quidditch?”

Granger tilted her head. “Well, when you put it that way, I guess I’ll just go.” 

She dropped her feet off the back of the chair to the floor and made to close her book, but Draco’s hand shot out and pressed the pages open. 

She started and he did too, not having consciously commanded his arm to perform the action.

“I didn’t mean—”

Granger laughed. 

“I know what you meant,” she assured him and settled back into her seat. 

Draco pulled his hand back and crossed his arms, locking them into place in case they decided to have a mind of their own again.

“To answer your question truthfully,” she continued, “I come because I enjoy Quidditch.”

He glanced down at the dense text her eyes had just recently been eagerly taking in.

“That’s not the truth.”

Her smile fell. “I’m not lying, Malfoy.”

He raised one brow and shrugged disbelievingly, but Granger only pressed her lips together, saying nothing more. He turned back to the match, content to watch the game as Ginny raced towards the tallest hoop with the quaffle.

Finally, Draco heard a sigh. 

“I guess I’ve just—Quidditch makes my friends happy. They like the sport, so I like it too.” She stated it as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.

But it wasn’t. Not to him. He could admit that maybe he didn’t understand the friendships she had—having really only had Crabbe and Goyle attached to him like leeches throughout Hogwarts. Theo had been his friend the longest sure, but they’d always been content to let each other do as they please, knowing the other would be there when needed.

Surely, the most loyal, perfect Golden Trio and etc. would be just as understanding. She clearly hated the sport, finding more enjoyment in a dry history book than the match. If they were as good of friends to her as she was to them, they’d understand her having different interests and not make her feel obligated to attend every match. 

Draco watched her smile half-heartedly as she observed her friends across the way. Potter bounced his son up and down, cheering as Ginny made a particularly dangerous dive for the falling quaffle, while the Weasley brothers screamed obscenities at the beater who’d directed a bludger at her grip. Theo egged them on.

“Yes,” Draco countered and Granger let out a breath as Ginny pulled up on her broom, narrowly missing the ground, “But because you _actually_ like it or because you feel like you’re _expected_ to like it?”

Her eyes flicked back to him and she opened her mouth to retort before shutting it again, frowning, and Draco felt a little pride in rendering her speechless. Her brows furrowed, the lines between them sinking further down until they were almost between her eyes. 

“I’m their friend. I support them by being here, don’t I? I’m obligated to attend?” Her tone raised at the end of the sentence, making it more into a question than a fact.

Draco shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “I’m just saying, Granger, you’ve attended every match by sitting in the back and reading a book and no one really talks to you. Are you really here because you like to watch Ginny and the Harpies or are you just here because you think it’s expected of you?”

Granger frowned and didn’t answer. He wondered if he had accidentally offended her. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had. It was too easy sometimes for him to slip back into old habits around her. Maybe he shouldn’t have said the part where no one really talks to her.

Finally, she slammed the cover of her book closed and turned in her seat, facing him. 

_Uh-oh._

“You’re right, Malfoy.”

“I—What?” he stammered.

“You’re. Right,” she said slowly with a teasing grin. “I come to every game because I am Ginny’s friend, and therefore it is expected of me to be here to support her, even though I have absolutely no interest in this highly dangerous sport. In fact, I arguably hate it.” Granger shrugged and crossed her arms. “So what am I to do about that?”

Draco recovered and shrugged as well. “Send her a good luck Howler and go to Flourish and Blotts.”

Granger threw her head back and laughed. He watched as a pleasant pink filled her cheeks and she rocked forward onto the armrest, brushing some escaping curls from her face as her laughter bubbled off.

The fact that he, Draco Malfoy: Granger’s Childhood Bully, made her laugh that hard was not lost on him.

She leaned forward on the armrest between them and shook her head, smirking. 

“You have no idea how much better of a day that sounds to me.” She laughed again. “You know? I might steal that for the next match.”

Draco was pulled into her gravity and he sat forward again. “All yours, Granger,” he murmured.

Her amber eyes flicked once more between his and he thought of a swirling glass of firewhisky. 

“Hermione.”

Draco blinked, wondering how much time had passed before she’d spoken. “Huh?” 

“We’re adults now, aren’t we?” The corner of her eyes crinkled. “I’ll call you Draco if you’ll call me Hermione.”

Hearing his given name from her lips brought back that weird feeling in his chest again, some fluttering he had to rub.

He tested the name in his mind. _Hermione_. It pulled at him like he was smelling a mouth-watering treat he knew would be delicious and addicting if he could just taste it once. But he didn’t think he had the strength to combat that addiction at the moment, and that grin of hers was becoming hard enough to resist.

“You’ll always be Granger to me,” he replied.

“Alright then, _Malfoy_ ,” she emphasized, but she was giving him his grin (When had it become _his_?) and there was a teasing glint in her eyes. “I’ll get you there one day.”

Draco thought he was having a heart attack—or acid reflux. _One day_. To him, these meetings had been chance encounters. He never left one expecting another—other than the agreed-upon gala—but she seemed to treat him as a commonplace fixture in her life now. _One day._

He needed a potion to calm whatever was happening in his chest right now.

“I have to ask,” Granger said after a moment, setting her book finally down, and nodding up at his head. “Did you actually go to a Muggle baseball game?”

Draco let out a bark of laughter at the unexpected turn.

“Yes,” he replied, tugging on the brim so she could see the logo better. “Will’s father was a Muggle. Took him often as a kid. He’s a big fan. He tries to take Rose to a game any weekend they can.”

Granger reached a hand up and delicately traced the ‘M’ embroidery with one finger. He could feel the pressure against his forehead, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

“And they took you too?”

“A few times,” he answered. He bit the inside of his cheek at the memory of his first game. “At first, I think, it was their misplaced idea of healing for me.” 

Granger could tell there was something more and tilted her head, waiting. 

“I wasn’t… in a good place when they found me, and I guess they thought…”

“Hanging around Muggles for a few hours would be fun for you?”

Draco grimaced but nodded. “They didn’t know who I was yet. What I had—I think they thought it’d be an escape for me.”

“And you didn’t tell them? About… everything?”

Draco shook his head. “Not initially.”

“Why not?”

He chewed on that before answering.

“It felt...nice in a way,” he said, finally and as the truth tumbled out of his lips, he felt that he couldn’t hold the rest back. “Nice to be someone different. To see how a wizarding family, so different from mine, lived. Muggles were just their neighbors. Non-magical, but the same. I didn’t have to follow my father’s script anymore. I could be someone new around them, someone I think—I was starting to realize—I actually wanted to be.”

Granger considered him, her lips turned up in a secret smile as if they shared something together, an inside joke, but he had no idea what was funny.

“And was it? An escape, I mean?” she asked.

“It was. It was great.” 

Draco’s body eased with the memory of the baseball games. Of baking under the hot sun, downing condensating cheap beer with Will, heckling batters, and stealing handfuls of Rose’s caramel corn when she wasn’t looking. 

A sharp whistle blew from the pitch and he was torn out of his memories, Potter and Weasley yelling at the referee from their perch at the end of the box. 

Draco’s eyes refocused and he found Granger watching him closely. As if she was to be given a test later on his every feature. He shifted under her gaze awkwardly and pulled the brim of his cap up and down, resettling it on his head.

“Well,” Granger finally said, turning in her seat to face him fully. “Britain doesn’t have much baseball, but Muggles have somewhat of a similar sport called cricket. It dates back to the medieval period and actually—”

“I’m not about to get a history lesson on sports from _you_ , Granger, am I?”

She pressed her mouth closed and looked up at him through her eyelashes sheepishly. Whatever was in his chest fluttered again and this time it was accompanied with a very unexpected, but not wholly unpleasant, rush down to his groin at the sight of her teeth pressed into the soft flesh of her bottom lip.

_What the fuck is wrong with me today?_

“I suppose not,” she replied, laughing lightly. 

She needed to stop looking at him like that now. _Now_ , now. What in Salazar’s name—? This was Granger, for fuck’s sake. He’d hated her for the majority of his life. He’d thought her lower than dirt. Now he was shifting in his seat trying to alleviate pressure in his pants because she was biting her lip and looking at him with those firewhisky eyes—

“Oi, Hermione!” Weasley called from the other side of the box, beckoning her over, and Draco had never felt an ounce of gratefulness for that ginger existence in his life, but this moment might just change that. 

Hermione gave Draco an apologetic grimace and with a “be back” got up. His eyes unwittingly followed her as she went, chestnut curls swinging gently down her back. 

_Fuck’s sake._

A particularly raucous scream from the crowd had him turn towards the front of the box, grateful for the distraction. He took a deep breath and tried to catch up with the match he had so romanticized earlier but had hardly watched a single second of—only to find he was not exactly alone on his end of the box. 

Theo stood before him leaning back against the ledge. Smirking.

“Can I help you, Nott?” Draco asked loftily, leaning over to watch the Harpies seeker chase after a golden blur.

Theo raised a brow and shook his head, that infuriating smirk still plastered on his face. 

“No, mate,” he said, downing his drink. “Only wanted to see if you needed a refill. You look thirsty.”

Draco scowled and lifted his full glass of butterbeer. “I’m good. Thanks.”

Granger’s laugh drifted to them from the opposite end of the box and Draco’s eyes unconsciously slid in her direction. Just in time to see her throw her arms around Weasley. _Around her ex-boyfriend._ His eyes narrowed.

“Green looks as good on her as blue does, don’t you think?” 

Draco’s eyes shot back to the game, fixing them on one of the Puddlemere beaters hovering near the stands. 

“Not so much on you.”

“Nott,” Draco growled, “I don’t know what you’re saying, but if you don’t stop, I’ll throw you over the ledge.”

“You know,” Theo kept his casual tone, unbothered by Draco’s threats. “I brought you here because I thought I’d get to watch a match with my long lost best mate instead of making nice with Potter and Weasley—not that I don’t enjoy their company,—”

“—Enjoy Weasley’s company?” Draco interjected incredulously.

“—Yes. As I was saying, you haven’t even watched a second of the match with me. Not that I blame you.” Theo grinned then, a waggle to his eyebrows that Draco did not appreciate. “If I was the least bit into witches, I’d also leave you so deep in the dust for Granger. With an arse like that…”

Draco sputtered. “I—Nott, what are you—”

Theo cut him off and spread his arms wide. “Hermione!”

“Theo!” Granger appeared suddenly, stepping around the back of Draco’s chair and leaning forward to hug and kiss Theo on the cheek. “I’m sorry I haven’t said hello yet.”

Draco’s scowl felt permanently etched on his face as he watched the friendly display. As two people who had stood on opposite sides of the war five years ago casually hugged and kissed each other’s cheeks. 

_Theo had stayed_ , Draco reminded himself. Theo hadn’t run away. He had stayed and had worked hard every day for the past five years to change his image. To shed everything of his father but his name. Draco had never felt more of a coward for running away to America than when he thought of his friend.

“Not at all, “Theo said, “I didn’t want to disrupt you and Draco. You two seemed quite… _enthralled_.”

Draco’s fists tightened over his armrests. If Theo didn’t shut up—right now—a very nasty hex was coming his way. But what drew Draco’s attention next was not Theo’s wink, but Granger, whose exposed neck under her ponytail was slowly growing red.

 _She was mad,_ he realized. Draco had seen the reaction plenty of times before, usually from something he had spit at her in class. First, her neck would grow red, then it would reach her face, and she’d either snipe something at him in return or haughtily stick her nose in the air and walk away. 

She was mad at Theo’s thinly veiled innuendos. And rightfully so, Draco thought embittered. Granger wasn’t anything more than a friendly, civil acquaintance. What else could she be to _Draco Malfoy_? Not after everything he had done to her; not after all the name-calling in school, not after all the pain he and his family had caused her for _twelve years_. 

He wasn’t Theo. He hadn’t stayed and worked to clear his name. He had run and drank away the memories. He erased his family and found a new one.

Granger was only being friendly to him because she felt bad for him. 

Because she knew something about his mother that he didn’t and she pitied him for it.

Draco stood suddenly from his seat. And he did what he did best. He ran.

“I just realized—I have to go—Appointment I made.” Draco pulled the green Harpies scarf off his neck and dropped it to his seat. “Thanks for the ticket. See you later, Theo. Granger.”

“But—” Granger turned on her heel to face him.

“You don't have anything going on,” Theo said, a questioning tilt of his head.

Draco ignored them both. He made to exit the aisle of seats when Granger’s voice stopped him. 

“Wait.” 

Her hand was extended out towards his arm as if she was about to grab him. She snapped it back to her side. 

“Thank you for the potion advice,” she said. “I was surprised at how well it actually worked. I’ve felt great lately.”

Her words grated at his anger further and an indignant heat flooded him. 

_I was surprised… actually…_

His resentment swallowed any reminder of that day in the Apothecary, the peaceful entente they’d created. 

“I was always just behind you in potions, Granger,” he sneered. _Always ever just on her heels._ “if only anyone had looked past your forest of hair.”

“Draco…” Theo sighed, shutting his eyes, but Draco chose not to hear it or see Granger’s face as it hardened.

“And maybe you would have beaten me,” she snapped, “if you had focused on _that_ , instead of other _pursuits_.”

Theo inhaled sharply between his teeth and Draco seethed. His left forearm burned. 

But he had no response. No quick remark or scathing snipe. She was right. She was always right, wasn’t she? And she only confirmed what he had already been thinking. Why pretend to get along when there was too much history between them?

He swept quickly out of the box, his brisk pace only lessening once he reached the stairwell; and as the door slammed firmly shut behind him, Draco fell back against the stone wall, catching his uneven breath and desperately trying to calm the rage roiling in his stomach.

He closed his eyes. His head hit the wall hard as he tilted it back and behind his eyelids images of the past few minutes flashed in waves: Granger in Weasley’s arms—the anger painting the back of her neck—the curls trapped by her ponytail falling down her back like silk—her face twisted in rage as he mocked those same curls—Granger in Weasley’s arm.

Draco pulled his head forward and let it fall against the stone wall once more.

_“Fuck.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you as always for reading and for the love, kudos, and comments. It truly means a lot to me. I really didn't expect ANYONE to like this but me.
> 
> Due to life, I'm a bit behind in my writing schedule, so my next update will be delayed until 10/17. Yell at me in the comments so I am motivated to keep my own deadline.
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> Stadium Love | Metric  
> Finally | The Frames
> 
> UPDATE: I wrote a companion piece that no one asked for! 😬 Check out Draco's first baseball game with Rose and Will here, [Cheap Beer and Baseball Caps](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827720).


	6. Scarf

####  **April 2003 | Dorset**

Hermione picked up the green and gold scarf from Malfoy’s chair, the anger in his wake dissipating as quickly as he had exited the private box in Puddlemere United’s stadium, and dampening her own pique. 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she muttered as she pulled the scarf through her grip.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Hermione,” Theo replied. He pushed off the ledge he had been leaning against and stepped around her, falling into his friend’s abandoned seat. “He shouldn’t have snapped at you either.”

“I just thought we were becoming…” she trailed off. 

_Friends? Really, Hermione._

But she wanted to be. She surprised herself with how much so. She wanted to hang out with Malfoy. Grab drinks and poke his brain about potions and magical creatures.

There was something about him that drew her in—and it wasn’t just that easy smile, the smile she couldn’t help but map with her eyes and markdown in the book in her mind. He both calmed and excited her. Talking with him had made her feel more like herself than she had in years. He had spoken to her as if he truly understood her where others haven't. 

She folded the scarf between her hands and draped it over her beaded bag at her feet. Her head told her she shouldn’t have been surprised at the familiar, cold Malfoy glare, but… 

Theo’s own smile faltered. 

“It may have been my doing, Granger. I—pushed him too far with my teasing. Not your fault.”

“What teasing?” she asked, but before he could respond her friends appeared over his shoulder.

“Well, I guess Malfoy is still a prick,” Ron said, “I can’t believe you and Ginny invited him, Hermione. He's still a Slytherin, not to mention a Death Eater.”

“Watch it, Weasley,” Theo growled. 

Ron clapped Theo on the back. “Ah, no offense, mate.” 

“Malfoy? A prick?” George gasped, “Catch me, Ron, I may faint at the shock.” 

Harry chuckled as George sagged against his brother and Hermione shot him a look. 

“What?” Harry asked, lifting his hands in defense. “I apologized to him, alright?”

Ginny appeared then, fresh from the showers in leggings and a Quidditch World Cup shirt, her cropped hair slicked back and dark red with water. She pulled James from Harry’s chest and set him on her hip.

“Well, that was a terrible defeat,” she said, bouncing her giggling son, “Coming to our place for dinner?” She looked around the box then, noticing a missing party. “Malfoy left already?”

“He—,” Theo rubbed the back of his neck and stood. 

“He left in a huff,” Harry interrupted, unbuckling James’ carrier from his chest and setting it on a seat. “He and Hermione were snapping at each other like we were at Hogwarts.”

Ginny hummed as if to say she had been expecting that and Hermione frowned.

“You’re right though, Hermione.” Ginny leaned in towards her and Theo as if she had a secret for them, but her volume never lowered. “He really looked quite fit in Muggle clothes.”

Hermione glowered at her drunken words repeated back to her while Harry and George laughed and Ron mimed gagging. 

She had invited Theo to join her and Ginny at the Leaky the night she’d returned from America. Tired from the international Portkey and still slightly annoyed at Malfoy, she’d drunk a little too much as Theo grilled her for news of his friend. 

_“Was he alive?”_

_“Yes, obviously, Theo!”_

_“Was he happy?”_

_“No, he’s a miserable git, as always!”_

_“But how did he look?”_

_“Merlin, he looked really fit! Of course, he did! Of course, Malfoy could make hard labor and dirty Muggle clothes look as effortless as...”_

Ginny had pressed her lips together, body vibrating with suppressed laughter, and Hermione had realized too late through the whiskey fog that Theo had only been asking if Draco had looked well. 

“Ginny, that is revolting,” George complained and she chased him out of the box, simpering about Malfoy as Ron and Harry followed, laughing. 

Hermione huffed and bent to retrieve her book and beaded bag from below her seat. She jumped as Theo’s feet shuffled beside her.

“Theo?” she asked, realizing he hadn’t headed downstairs with everyone else. She glanced up at him, but he only stared down at Draco's abandoned seat. “You coming?”

“He’s not a prick,” Theo burst out. 

She straightened up and frowned. “I—”

“Alright,” he sighed, “He was a prick. But he doesn’t mean to be now.” He dragged his hands roughly through his hair. “You don’t know what it was like for him. What he went through.”

Hermione blinked and he grimaced. 

“ _Fuck_. I know you all went through shit. But you don’t _know…_ ” 

He pressed his lips together, pain flashing across his eyes, and Hermione suddenly realized that she really _didn’t_ know. What had any of the children on the other side of the war endured? Theo, he’d luckily avoided becoming a Death Eater like his father, like Malfoy, but she didn’t think growing up in a home like that had been easy. And Draco…

She had only gotten a glimpse at what Draco had been through when they should’ve been in Seventh Year, living at a Manor steeped with dark magic. She had been a little preoccupied that day, and it wasn’t a day she liked to revisit, but she could still vividly see Draco’s washed out, gaunt face. His sunken eyes and pronounced cheekbones twisted in panic. His white lips pressed together and Narcissa’s tight grip on his arm as Hermione’s eyes turned to them, lost in the blinding pain.

Theo sighed. “He’s still trying to figure out who he is now without all that fucked up… He’s figuring out how to be a different person.” 

Hermione nodded and pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder, Draco’s scarf draped over it. She placed a hand over the wool, feeling the plush knit stitching beneath her fingers. 

_A different person._ She could appreciate that. 

What she’d said to Draco before she left America had been true: the Reserve did seem like a great escape from their fucked up pasts. Every day she entered the Ministry where she had been attacked by Death Eaters. She visited her friends at the home she’d hid away in as they sought pieces of Voldemort’s soul. She worked hard to plan a party for the day she lost so many loved ones and would never see again. 

There were days where she honestly wondered what it would be like to just leave everything behind, to not be surrounded by all those memories of pain anymore. What would that peace feel like? She craved that escape, if only just for a moment.

Hermione suddenly understood why Draco never returned home, not even for his dying mother. In some way, she didn’t want to shame him at all for that. The look he had in his eyes as he talked about his first baseball game. The way he just got to _be_ for the first time in a long time, how he just got to enjoy something without the pressure or darkness that invaded their youth. She was drawn into it, wanted to feel the addicting contentment his voice dripped, to siphon the feeling straight from his lips.

Hermione shook her head quickly and looped her arm with Theo’s, giving it a tug to bring them both back to the stadium. 

“C’mon, let’s not think of that anymore,” she said, more for herself than him, “Let’s have some dinner with our friends and you can tell me about all the attractive, single men at your office.”

“I should check on Draco—” Theo started.

“—Malfoy will be fine,” Hermione cut him off, and cut her thoughts off from easy smiles and addicting voices, “Just like how I hear this Connell is…”

Theo laughed and allowed her to pull him along out of the box as he described just how inappropriately tight the new photographer’s shirts were at the _Prophet_ office.

* * *

####  **April 2003 | The Leaky Cauldron**

Hermione sat in a booth in the back of the Leaky Cauldron, one foot flat on the seat and her chin resting on her bent knee. It was a Friday night and the pub was filled as usual with shouts and laughter. 

Hermione, however, sat alone, having somehow agreed, before she escaped her office, to help the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Robards, finish the quarterly budget proposal that he had, as usual, waited until the eleventh hour to complete. Due in bright and early Monday.

_“Cheers, Hermione! You're a Minister for Magic in the making.”_

She sighed and shoved the completed packet of parchment with her quill. Because, of course, she’d finished it.

That was her: Hermione Granger. Brightest Witch of Her Age. Always willing to take on more and more. Expected Minister for Magic in a few years. 

Why did everyone say that to her as if that’s what she wanted?

_“Because you actually like it or because you feel like you’re expected to like it?”_

What if she didn’t know yet?

_Minister for Magic._

She wanted to scream. 

When she was finally promoted to Deputy Head of DMLE, Hermione had felt more excitement and passion for something than she’d ever had since Hogwarts. It almost brought her back to herself, who she had been before all the dark she’d seen weighed inside her and scrambled her mind with panic-inducing nightmares. 

She had so many ideas for change, so many laws she wanted to pass to dismantle pureblood biases and promote Squib equality. But the more she was forced to play politics with the Wizengamot and a bunch of resistant old wizards, the more disheartened she grew. 

After running and fighting for so long, she felt like she was now moving at a glacial pace, jumping through political hoops and compromising on addendums she didn’t believe in. She felt like she was mainly just Harry’s Auror liaison and Robards’ lackey.

And now this Remembrance Gala… 

Just another opportunity for the Ministry to parade their two celebrity employees around. To pretend as if they weren’t infiltrated and complicit during the war. To say, “Look! We have the Brightest Witch of Her Age and the Boy Who Lived working with us! Don’t think about the fact that you still fear sending your half-blood children to Hogwarts and Muggle-borns are still looked down on!”

Hermione truly did believe Kingsley was a good Minister for Magic, but frankly, the position had always seemed more like a figurehead role than anyone enacting great change. Fudge had waved at the cameras. Scrimgeour had ensured all was well. And now Kingsley was promoting healing when Hermione barely felt held together with Spellotape.

 _The Remembrance Gala._ Hermione drained her firewhisky and shut her eyes, leaning back against the booth. She’d run out of that combined Calming Draught/Draught of Peace potion last week and her calendar had been too chaotic to allow time for brewing more. Kingsley had finally decided earlier this month to host the gala at Hogwarts. She had desperately tried to persuade him otherwise, but he had already spoken to Professor McGonagall and the plans were underway.

She pulled her arms tighter around herself as she tried to breathe deeply through her nose. Her mind raced a hundred miles a minute, flicking between happy memories at the castle and images of the dead in the Great Hall. Her friends, classmates, professors, Order members.

Did Kingsley really think hosting a gala to honor them in the Hall they died in was a good idea? Had he not cried over Remus and Tonks’ bodies there too?

A flash of pain swept through her head and her breathing became shallow, her focus swam. The laughter and chatter in the Leaky Cauldron dulled to a humming buzz as she thought of stepping on those grounds again. She’d barely made it through Eighth Year. More than once Ginny had found her on the edge of the Black Lake, freezing and numb with a half-drunk bottle of firewhisky.

Hermione wrapped her arms around her bent leg and tried to slow her racing mind, but it only seemed to flit around like an escaped snitch. 

“Focus,” she breathed.

Great Hall.

 _Breathe_.

Battle. Spells. Blood.

_Breathe._

Malfoy.

_Malfoy._

She desperately latched onto the memory of Ginny’s Harpies match last week, the way Draco’s face had softened and transformed as he spoke about his life in America. The way his voice dripped with contentment. The way it drew her in as if he could pass that feeling to her through words alone. She held on to the feeling, letting it fill her and calm her.

Hermione felt someone slide onto the bench opposite her. She opened one eye, peeking at Harry as he leaned forward on his elbows, hair down and falling almost to his shoulders.

“You need a haircut, Black,” she said, dropping her foot to the floor and opening both eyes.

Harry chuckled. 

“Are you sitting back here working?” he asked, shaking his head at the piles of parchment between them. “You never change.”

He’d said it with a smile of teasing sentimentality, but her mind still swirled with firewhisky and anxiety, and the words suddenly piqued her. 

_I have changed though!_ She wanted to scream it at him, shake him and make her see that she wasn’t the same anymore, and she didn’t think she’d ever go back. Why was she the only one who seemed so fucked up after everything that had happened? Why did she feel so alone? Why couldn’t they see that she struggled to breathe most days? That she still carried around the same magically expanded beaded bag filled with everything they might need to run again? Just because it made her feel better?

“That’s me,” she said instead and pasted on a smile. 

Theo slid into the booth beside her just then, swapping her empty glass with a full one.

“Just finishing some work before Monday,” she continued, nodding her head to Theo in thanks.

“Well, with the gala next week, you won’t be so swamped at work anymore,” Harry said. 

“Harry!” Neville shouted over the din and Hannah waved at him from the bar. Harry stood and sighed, “Neville is going to try to convince me to take the DADA position again. I suspect McGonagall will do the same next week.”

Hermione pushed a laugh through her strained smile, only dropping it once Harry had turned his back for the bar. She sighed, silent for a moment as she listened to Theo’s ice clink against his glass while he sipped. 

“Theo,” she started, and bit her cheek.

Theo turned in his seat, mid-sip, as he waited expectantly for her to finish her thought. Hermione sighed again and brought her foot back up, leaning her chin on her knee once more. 

“Do you think I’m… different… now?” she asked finally.

Theo quirked an eyebrow. “Now? As opposed to when?”

“From when we were kids. At Hogwarts.”

“Granger, I barely knew you then. You were just that annoying Gryffindor who loved to read.” 

_Books and cleverness._ Hermione swirled her glass against the tabletop, watching the amber liquid whirlpool. No matter how much she felt like she would never be the same, maybe that’s all she’d be to everyone else.

Theo put down his drink and turned in his seat to face her.

“Hermione. Did you ever think five years ago—even two years ago—that you’d be sitting next to me enjoying a drink,” Theo nudged Hermione’s shoulder, her chin rocking against her knee, “much less friends with me?”

She shrugged. She’d always been compassionate, easy to see the good in people, but being friends with a Slytherin or the son of the man who more than once tried to kill Harry? After everything they’ve done and seen? No, perhaps not.

“Fundamentally,” Theo continued when she remained silent, “you’re the same person you’ve always been: bookish, smart, caring.” 

He poked her three times in the cheek as he listed her qualities and laughed as she swatted at his finger. 

“But,” he continued, now somber, “you’ve gone through something terrible. You’ve seen things no kid should ever have seen.” 

Hermione closed her eyes and breathed deeply, her shoulders rising and falling once.

“You don’t feel like the same person, Granger, because you _aren’t_. But that doesn’t mean you’ve completely changed.”

She thought of baseball caps and quiet murmurs to a silvery creature. She turned her head to Theo, her cheek resting on her knee.

“‘Figuring out who I am without all that…’” she murmured.

Theo smiled softly and tapped a finger to her nose. 

“You know? I only got drinks that day with you and Ginny because you reminded me of him,” he said.

Hermione blinked, remembering the day in question when she’d heard that Theo had been rejected by the Department of Mysteries—his head in his hands as he sat on the edge of the Atrium fountain, his glare as she approached him, his laugh as she informed him that the entire department was a bunch of archaic pricks with their heads up their arseholes for not seeing true talent past the end of their wizened noses, and his smile as she asked if he wanted to go for drinks.

“Really?”

Theo nodded. “That day all I could think about was how maybe Draco did the right thing by leaving and never looking back,” he explained, “What place was there for a Nott now anyway? I don’t blame them… 

“But then you appeared before me—and I barely knew you from Merlin—and you had this look on your face that just…reminded me of him.” Theo tilted his head as he spoke as if lost in the memory. “I wasn’t his lackey back at Hogwarts like Crabbe or Goyle, but we’d been friends since we were toddlers. He knew my dad and what my home was like. And any time he saw that get to me, any time I pulled away from everyone and everything, he’d find me in whatever corner I closed myself off in, stand before me, and give me that same look you did. He’d say something just as snarky. Just enough to make me laugh and pull me back out of my head.”

The image Theo painted conflicted with the cruel blonde boy she knew from Hogwarts. 

But not with the man she talked to at the Harpies match. The one who tried to convince her that for once she should do something for herself instead of only thinking of others. 

“You make him sound like he was secretly a good person,” Hermione said. 

She’d meant it as a tease, but Sirius’ words echoed in her mind. _The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside of us._

Theo shrugged. “He was mostly a git, but then again, so was I.”

“You did laugh at me in potions just as much as the next Slytherin.”

“Granger, you _were_ a right swot.”

He was the second Slytherin to call her a swot in as many months, but this time she smiled and shrugged back. 

“I guess so,” she repeated.

A burst of laughter sounded from the Leaky bar. George and Ron had arrived, showing off to Harry, Neville, and Hannah their new Nose-Morphing chews, based on the trick Tonks used to do during dinners at Grimmauld Place. 

She knew she should go over. Join her friends. Laugh. But she didn’t know if she could laugh at something that made her want to cry. In her mind, George’s face morphed into fourteen-year-old Ginny, giggling behind her napkin as Tonks turned her nose into a dog’s snout behind Sirius.

She shook her head and turned to Theo, nudging him out of the booth. 

“I’m gonna head home, Theo.”

“You sure?” he asked as he stood. She slid out of the booth. 

Hermione nodded and he helped her into her overcoat, turning her to face him as she shrugged it on. He rested his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. 

“I know sometimes it feels like you’re alone,” Theo murmured to her, “and that you’ll never be the same again. But you, Hermione Granger, are still the same compassionate, genius witch that helped destroy a dark wizard and…” He pulled a scarf from her coat pocket, draping the green and gold fabric around her shoulders, “befriended a Slytherin.”

As Hermione walked down the cold, wet London street to the Apparition point, she pulled the Harpies scarf tighter around her neck, silver eyes and an easy smile filling her mind, and for a moment, she wondered which Slytherin Theo had been referring to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter was incredibly hard to write. I don't know what it was, but Hermione has been really hard to connect to lately. Also, I'm finally no longer unemployed! Good news, but also bad news cause it's a stressful job and takes up a whole lot of writing time. I'll try my best to stay to the post dates I give you, but they may not be every week anymore. 
> 
> Next update will be 11/1.
> 
> If you missed it, I wrote a companion one-shot about [Draco's first baseball game!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827720)
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> Breathing Underwater | Metric (Hermione's song)  
> Rivers and Roads | The Head and the Heart  
> Another Story | The Head and the Heart


	7. A Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Some text in the first half of this chapter is taken directly from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

#### April 2003 | Covent Garden, London

Bony fingers wrapped around his upper arm and squeezed with surprising strength, yanking him closer to the swollen-faced boy. His father peered down beside him. 

“Draco, come here, look properly!” Lucius said, excitedly, “Is it? Is it Harry Potter?”

“I don’t know.” 

But, it was clearly Potter. There was no mistaking the green eyes behind those round wire-framed glasses. And Weasley and Granger behind him. Draco pulled a wall forward in his mind, blocking his thoughts as soon as they appeared, but the truth pushed exhaustingly against it, testing his strength. 

There was no mistaking who stood in the Malfoy Manor drawing room.

He tugged his arm from his father’s skeletal grip and strode to the fireplace where his mother stood, peering anxiously at the three dirty youths on her marble tile.

“We had better be certain, Lucius,” she hissed.

Draco turned from Narcissa. He stared fixedly at the white marble floor, eyes tracing the stone tiles, and replicating it in his mind, Occluding until he was barely hearing the frantic voices of his family. 

And then the sound of his name alongside _her’s_ shot him back to the drawing room. His legs stumbled forward as if he’d just Apparated. 

“Look, Draco, isn’t it the Granger girl?”

“I…” His eyes moved throughout the room, never quite landing on her face, the chestnut skin of her cheeks swiped with the dirt she’d been dragged through, “... Maybe… Yeah.”

He turned towards the fireplace, his back to the prisoners, his eyes burning into the flames that filled the grate. He heard the tenor of his father’s voice rise in excitement behind him, but the actual words did not reach past Draco’s wall of Occlusion. Draco vaguely heard his own voice respond, felt the faint movement of his mouth, but he was so deep in the fog, he didn't know what he said. All he could think was _what have I done?_

With one _maybe_ , one stuttered _yeah_ , he’d possibly condemned her.

Flashes of red light reflected against the white marble of the mantle. Draco squeezed his eyes shut against Aunt Bella’s screams as they punctured his carefully constructed walls like knives. He turned and opened his eyes just as Weasley and Potter were being dragged back towards the cellar, Weasley struggling violently against Greyback’s shield charm, a purple bruise forming across his eye and cheek. 

Draco, however, was firmly fixed on Granger. He felt his breath leave him as Aunt Bella twisted her hand in Granger’s chocolate curls and dragged the girl to the center of the room. 

No, not ' _girl_.' 

Granger had faint lines at the corner of her eyes that could only appear from age. Her hair was longer than he remembered, less frizzy, and she wore a black wool overcoat he vaguely recognized from somewhere else. 

Draco raised a hand to smooth back his hair and his fingers grazed the curved brim of a cap. He pulled back sharply, looking down at his fingers, brows furrowed. His eyes tracked down the rest of his body. Denim jeans instead of pressed trousers. A flannel shirt unbuttoned over a white tee. He chanced a glance at his parents, but if they noticed his odd attire, they didn’t say.

 _This is not right._ A voice echoed through his ears, carried in on a breeze.

Bellatrix pulled Granger’s head back and leaned down to whisper in her ear. Her overcoat spread open as her spine bent backward, a green and gold Holyhead Harpies jumper pushing through. 

Her eyes slowly slipped up to Draco as his aunt waited for an answer to a question he couldn’t hear. 

Somehow, though, he knew what would happen next. 

Granger would press her lips shut, not giving anything away about Potter and where he’d been. Bellatrix would _Crucio_ her until she writhed on the floor and her throat bled from screaming. But still, Granger wouldn’t give up where they got the sword and Bellatrix would grow angrier and angrier until she pulled out her cursed knife, pinned Granger’s arm to the floor, and carved slowly, letter by letter. 

_Mudblood_.

“Well?” Bellatrix screeched. She shook her victim by her hair.

Granger’s lips twisted in a grimace, but her eyes never left Draco. They traced over him. She took him in like he was her first taste of water in weeks. He sucked in a breath as her eyes met his and softened. The corner of her lips slowly turned up into a sad smile. 

He felt his stomach drop.

“I will kill him if you don’t answer, Mudblood!” Bellatrix shrieked. She shoved Granger to the ground and stepped between them, pulling her wand on Draco.

 _This isn’t what happened_ , the voice whispered.

Draco looked between the end of Aunt Bella’s wand, trained on his face, and Granger crouched on the ground.

“No—don’t!” The words sounded torn from Granger, her hand raised towards him as she braced herself on the floor with the other. Her face was tight with fear. But not for herself.

“Ah,” Bellatrix smirked and slowly turned her wand back to Granger. “ _Crucio_.”

Granger’s body dropped to the floor like she was filled with lead. She folded in on herself. Screams tore from her throat and shattered Draco’s walls. Her body shook and her cries wavered, but Bellatrix didn’t let up, crouching forward and white-knuckling her wand as if she could puncture Granger's skin with the tip of it.

Draco’s knees collapsed and he stumbled forward once more. 

“Draco,” Narcissa hissed. Her hand shot out and gripped his elbow in a vice, holding him up. “Don’t interfere.”

This— in the back of his mind, he knew this part, at least, was correct: Granger being tortured and him watching, doing nothing, while his mother held him up by the crook of his elbow and hissed at him to stay where he was.

 _No_ , the voice whispered again. _Change it… Change it. Do something._

He looked down at his mother’s pale hand wrapped around his plaid-covered arm. Her Black and Malfoy family rings on her delicate fingers looked at war against his worn flannel shirt. There was a faint tear in the sleeve below her fingertips, sewn up by a friend after a silver, one-winged hippogriff had pecked at him. 

_“Crucio!”_

Granger’s screams shook the crystals in the chandelier above them and Draco tore his arm from his mother’s grip. 

_You are not him anymore. You can change it. Change it._

Red flashes flew from Draco’s wand before he could even think the spell. Brighter, more powerful than he’d ever cast before. He moved on instinct, launching himself between Granger and his aunt, casting a Shield Charm before Bellatrix could recover from the stun.

He wrapped an arm around Granger’s waist and pulled her tight to his side. Her weakened head slumped against his shoulder, but he felt the breath of her whisper across his neck.

“Draco…”

“You insolent brat!”

Draco peered through his Shield Charm at his family. Aunt Bella’s crazed face warped with rage. His father’s eyes burned with fury and betrayal. His mother’s lips pursed, and a spark in her eyes he couldn’t quite place.

Aunt Bella raised her wand.

“Hold tight, Granger,” he said and Disapparated them on the spot.

They landed hard on a dirt road.

Draco stood and looked around. He knew that he Disapparated them, but where did he take them?

 _Home_ , the voice whispered.

They only got to outside the Manor? Draco’s heart dropped and his head swiveled on the spot. 

A high wooden corral stood in the distance, a silvery creature sleeping under a wing. To his left, the dirt road ended at a one-story home, smoke curling from the chimney. His bedroom was inside—the third door on the left.

 _No,_ the voice echoed. _Home_.

He dropped to his knees and turned to his companion. “Granger—”

Her clothes changed again, morphing in the rising sun from the overcoat and Harpies jumper into a white button-up blouse. Her sleeves were rolled up and as she raised her right hand to Draco’s cheek, he saw her forearm was smooth.

“Draco.” 

He blinked, wondering when she had moved closer to him. His whispered name brushed against his skin. Her fingers caressed his face and he pressed his cheek into the warmth of her palm unconsciously, eyes roving over the unblemished forearm before him.

She breathed his name again and he followed it to her, hungrily. If it sounded that good coming from her lips, he wondered, what would it taste like?

He pushed closer, his lips a breath away from hers, and breathed, “Hermione.”

She smiled, her eyes fluttered shut, and Draco closed the gap between them, brushing his lips gently against hers. Hesitantly. Questioning. She answered him, sighing against his mouth and surging forward. She pressed her body roughly against him and he groaned. His hand slid up her spine and he tangled his fingers in her hair, tilting her head, pulling on the strands. Granger gasped and he felt his cock harden as she opened her mouth to him, her tongue swiping against his lips. 

_Tap. Tap._

Granger moaned as he pulled her closer into his lap, her knees on either side of his hips and pleasurable friction against him. She tipped her head back and breathed his given name again, a sound so sweet it at once broke his heart and filled him with desperate need. His lips attacked her neck as her fingers went to the hem of his shirt, brushing fire against his skin. Her hips rocked against him and—

_Tap, tap!_

Draco blinked and groaned, his eyes affronted by the glare of the rising sun. He squinted and rolled over onto his back, turning away from the shine through his window curtains. 

In his waking mind, he was both on a dirt road and laying against silk sheets. The latter, unfortunately, was stronger and pulled him back to the land of the living. He rubbed his palms into his eyes and took in his surroundings—Gray walls, king-sized bed, fluffy duvet. No dirt road. 

A severe lack of wandering fingers.

_Tap-tap!_

He moved to sit up and groaned again, flopping back down onto his pillows. 

_Fucking Merlin._ He took that back. There were some wandering fingers, but unfortunately, they were his own. 

His hand rested on his stomach just above his naval and he knew where it had just been drifting to in his sleep. Soft curls, chestnut skin shining golden in the rising sun, soft moans pushing past plump lips that he swallowed greedily. 

This was the fourth time in the past week he’d woken from what started as a nightmare and ended with him achingly hard and trying desperately not to picture amber eyes as he stroked himself in the shower. 

His fingers twitched toward his groin. Maybe he could just… think of someone else. Anyone else.

_Tap-tap!_

_Salazar-fucking-Merlin!_

Draco tore off his duvet and let the cold morning air hit him. He’d need a fucking ice bath to erase the memory of his dream—nightmare?—but his cold room would do for now. 

He stood once his nerves had settled and his cock softened, and he shuffled to the window, ready to strangle the owl that woke him this early and interrupted what had been promising to be a very good—no, nevermind. 

He opened the window and snatched the envelope from the tawny owl, waving it away before it could get any ideas about warming up inside.

The envelope was the same quality parchment as the one he received earlier this year. He turned it over and eyed the purple wax seal with trepidation. He knew this must be the official Remembrance Gala invitation and not a court summons, but still, a note of panic rang in his head at the sight of the double-M. 

He broke the seal and pulled out the heavy parchment invitation.

_Mr. Draco Malfoy,_

_The Ministry of Magic invites you to the first REMEMBRANCE GALA on May 2, 2003, on the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts and the destruction of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to honor those we’ve lost, and celebrate our heroes & heroines and the progress our world has made. _

_Please join us at seven o’clock in the evening in the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. Dress attire is formal robes. _

_Sincerely,_

_Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic_

_P.S. The Wizengamot is honored to award your mother, Narcissa Malfoy, the Order of Merlin, First Class for her part in the Battle._

Draco’s chest tightened as he read through the letter again. 

He didn’t read that right, did he? Hogwarts? Fucking _Hogwarts_? 

His chest rose and fell rapidly. His heart raced at the thought of walking through that castle again. The Astronomy Tower, the Great Hall where his classmates had lain to rest, the seventh-floor corridor where Crabbe—He couldn’t catch his breath. His brain scrambled. 

Really, he shouldn’t have been surprised. It was a Remembrance Gala for that night after all, but…

It’ll only be May. There will still be classes, children at school. Children that—

Draco choked, his throat squeezed shut.

No, he couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. He dressed quickly, shoving his legs into yesterday’s jeans and digging through his still-unpacked duffle bag. The Ministry is out to get him killed. He pulled his head roughly through a gray hoodie and stormed into the hallway for his shoes. _Granger_ is out to get him killed. He wasted no time tying his shoelaces, spelling them to lace up as he sped through his front hall and snatched his cap off a hook. First death by scars and memories, then by invading his dreams, and now this.

Well, he wasn’t going to do it. She could find someone else to accept the bloody-fucking award his mother didn’t deserve.

Draco Disapparated from his front hall with a shattering crack.

* * *

#### April 2003 | Islington, London

“Malfoy?” 

Draco froze mid-pace and swung around on his heel. Granger stood at the top step to her flat, a hand on her door, still open as she looked down at him in shock. She was dressed for work, her black coat over pressed trousers.

“How do you know where I live—”

“Are you trying to kill me, Granger?” 

She stepped back at his shout and blinked. “Excuse me?”

Draco marched through her front gate and up the concrete stairs until he was a step below her, parchment shoved in her face.

“Oh,” she replied, taking the invitation from his shaking hand, “you got it. Good.”

 _Good?!_ A veil of red fell over his eyes.

“Granger, you can’t be serious. Hosting this at fucking _Hogwarts—_ ”

“Ugh!” she muttered, running her eyes up and down the parchment as if she didn’t hear him. “I asked them to use ‘Voldemort’ not… I swear—”

 _“Granger!”_ he yelled, and snatched the invitation back from her, _“Who cares about the fucking name?”_

Her eyes snapped to his. She pressed her lips into a thin line. Draco’s shoulders rose and fell heavily, breathing in—out. Finally, she broke their staring competition and scanned her street while his nostrils flared and he tried desperately to Occlud against the storm raging in his head.

“Come in,” she said and moved to one side, gesturing through her door. 

“Granger—”

“No,” she cut him off with a hand and her eyes flicked to her neighbor as he stepped out and locked his door, eyeing them curiously. “I know. Just—come inside.”

She turned and disappeared into her flat. 

Draco shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and eyed her front hall warily. Her voice called to him from inside her home and he sighed, stepping gingerly over the threshold. He half expected her wards to reject him and spit him back out onto the sidewalk, but when that didn’t happen, he followed her down the hallway to her sitting room. He kept his shoulders tight, his hands in his pockets, careful not to touch or brush against anything. Granger and her small flat were light and he was probably still filled with dark magic.

Finally, he reached her sitting room and she crossed her arms, leaning her hips against the back of her sofa, waiting for him to start. But he only stood there, biting his cheek until his tongue tasted heat and metallic. 

When he didn’t speak, she huffed and shrugged out of her coat. “Malfoy—”

“I can’t go, Granger,” he interjected sharply, swallowing against the blood and panic.

“Of course you can,” she replied, waving him off, “I know it’ll be hard for you. I’m dreading it as well, believe me, but Kingsley overruled me—”

“No.” He was going to bite clean through his cheek at this point. “It’s not that—” 

He breathed deeply through his nose, his voice coming out almost staccato. 

“You’re out of your _fucking mind_ , Granger, if you think anyone will just let me walk through the doors of that castle after I let in those _monsters_ to teach their children. There are still First Years there that lived through the Carrows’ detentions, and I—” 

Draco choked back his words, the memory of the Carrows’ _discipline_ invading his mind.

Granger dropped her arms and stood straight. “The Carrows,” she whispered, “You had to—Did you have to—?”

“No,” he snapped, “I didn’t. I _never_.” He shut his eyes and breathed again, cooling his surge of anger at her accusation. He opened his eyes and shrugged. “Perk of being the only student Death Eater, I suppose.”

For a moment, her eyes flicked between his own, reading him. She must have found whatever she was looking for because finally, she released him, nodding and dropping back against the sofa. 

“Granger,” he whispered. His voice cracked and he felt the words fall from his lips before he could stop them. “I can’t do it.”

Her eyes softened as they met his own again. Her shoulders dropped and she nodded silently. She seemed upset. He knew she was planning this event and he knew he was probably adding a complication into her day. For that, he felt awful.

But to walk through those Hall doors and be greeted by hundreds of glares he already received on the streets of Diagon with no Muggle clothes or baseball caps to disguise him? That would feel a thousand times worse. He couldn’t do it. Not _there_.

Granger’s fingers began to tap an anxious rhythm on her thigh. His eyes drifted down to watch. Thighs that only this morning in his dream had bracketed his hips—

_Fuck._

Granger took a deep breath and seemed to steel herself for what she would say next.

“Come with me.” 

His eyes shot back up to hers. _Come with me._ Heat rushed up the back of his neck as recalled her breathy whisper from his dream two nights ago.

“To the gala,” she clarified.

_Right._

Draco took a step back as he suddenly realized what she’d asked him to do. 

“Granger—”

“I’m serious. All my friends have someone—well, I’d just be going by myself anyway, and I’d rather not go back there alone. I don’t think you want to either. So,” she tried to shrug it off as if her statement meant nothing, but he saw an anxious twist to her lips, “go with me.”

 _Go with her?_ Despite himself and his earlier fear, he could almost picture it. Granger on his arm in periwinkle blue dress robes, guiding her through the crowd, the look on Weasley’s face, twirling her into a waltz as smoothly as only his pureblood upbringing could do, pulling her against him… 

“As friends. Obviously,” she clarified, waving a hand as if to bat his thoughts away.

 _Ah._ He frowned and shifted uncomfortably. Friends. Did friends usually have wet dreams about each other like they were thirteen? Pansy certainly had never featured in any of his. 

“Friends. Obviously,” he repeated, pushing away his discomfort at the word. It felt, at the same time, like too much and not enough for what they were.

Granger’s cheeks grew red. “Yes, of course.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of other wizards dying to go with you, Granger,” he sneered, “I wouldn’t want to intrude on anyone getting a chance to go to the Gala with the heroine of our world.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, “But, you’re right, let me go ask one of the _many_ men lining up outside.” 

She rolled her eyes and waved her hand exhaustedly at her front door like there was truly a line down the steps and out her gate.

He smirked at her irritation. “Kind of you to let me cut.”

The blush that bloomed from her neck to her cheeks rose before he’d realized what he’d implied—as though he had been in the line of men waiting to go on a date with her. He waited for her scoff, her biting retort.

Granger only bit her bottom lip, the corner of her mouth lifting in a furtive smile. He rolled his lips between his teeth before he could let out an embarrassing sound at the sight.

“As I said,” she continued, clearing her throat, “I’m dreading going back there as well. Eighth Year was especially difficult and I’ve avoided the castle ever since…” 

Her left hand rubbed her right arm absentmindedly as she spoke, pushing the sleeve of her blouse up. Her voice faded away as he watched her fingernails dig into the raised skin around the pale letters. She scratched at the scar as she spoke as if she didn’t know what she was doing.

Draco sucked in a breath and slammed down walls of Occlusion. He took a step back, his eyes fixed on the jagged ‘d’ her nail picked at.

Suddenly her left hand fell and she pulled her sleeve up. The scar on full display.

“Don’t.” Her voice was muffled like he was wearing his winter hat back on the Reserve, the one with flaps that fell over his ears. “Don’t Occlud like that, Malfoy. I know you are.”

His eyes wandered up to hers, the only thing that shone clearly through the fog.

“You wouldn’t say that if you could hear inside my head right now.” He heard his voice, but he didn’t feel his lips move.

“It’s inside my head too, Malfoy,” she snapped, “ _every fucking day._ ”

Her words shattered his walls. Merlin, did he only think of himself? Of course, she thought of it. _Of course,_ she suffered because of it. 

Granger’s face softened as she watched his glazed eyes clear.

“You didn’t name Harry that night,” she whispered, “You didn’t turn us in—”

“I didn’t stop it either.”

She nodded and pushed off the back of the sofa, stepping into his space. He tried to move backward, but his feet felt rooted to the spot. He didn’t breathe. Her right hand reached forward, hovering over his left arm.

“Did I hurt you?” she whispered, “When I—?”

“Yes,” he choked out. He tugged his arm behind his back, away from her fingers. “Doesn't matter. _I_ hurt _you_. I had. At school.”

She dropped her hand and shrugged. “I survived worse.”

He knew that to be true, but still, he wondered how she could let it go so quickly. He had been cruel, vindictive, back at Hogwarts. For no reason other than he had been told to hate her. He made her life hell. He tried to kill her mentors and friends. His own family had tried to kill _her_.

“My aunt—”

“That’s right,” she snapped, “Your aunt. Not you.” Her voice softened. “Don’t punish yourself, Malfoy, for something you didn’t do.” 

She raised her scarred arm between them, forcing him to see the pale scar in its entirety. 

_Mudblood_.

“I meant what I said at your trial,” she continued, “You were mean, a bully, but we were _kids_. You bought us precious time that night in the manor. You did the right thing.”

“You were tortured, Granger,” he bit back, “And I didn’t do anything. I was scared out of my fucking mind—”

“And you could’ve easily just said, ‘it’s them’ instead of ‘I don’t know.’ You knew it was us. I saw how you looked at me.”

“How I looked at you?”

 _Eyes wide. Knees buckled. Narcissa holding him back by his elbow as Granger’s screams tore through his own throat._

She didn't answer. He closed his eyes, nostrils flaring as he breathed.

“Do you know what Voldemort said when Harry and Cedric first arrived in the graveyard?” she asked.

Draco’s brow furrowed. He opened his eyes and shook his head.

“He said ‘kill the spare’ and Wormtail murder Cedric within seconds.” She held his gaze, daring him to look away from her as she spoke. “Do you think if you had identified Harry that Ron and I would have survived minutes?”

They wouldn’t have survived long enough for Voldemort to Apparate there. His aunt would have only been too eager.

“You couldn’t have stopped Bellatrix from torturing me,” Granger continued, “But you saved my life that night all the same. You see it as cowardice. I don’t.”

He did see it as cowardice. He always would, no matter what she said or how she tried to convince him otherwise. 

“I don’t know what you went through, Malfoy. Theo doesn’t talk about it. But I see this scar every minute of every day and I’m reminded of that night every minute of every day and the one thing I’ve had to learn over the past five years is that you can’t let your scars control you.”

He looked down at her arm, still held out between them, forcing himself to stare at the jagged, pale letters shiny against her tanned skin. He felt his own arm burn, scarred beneath the tattoo from all the times he tried to magic it or cut it away. He felt the folded photograph in his cap and he breathed slowly, sucking in air. In. Out. He met Granger’s eyes.

She smiled at him, his favorite one, the one that lit the night outside Grimmauld Place and made his chest hurt at the Quidditch match.

“When should I pick you up for the gala?” he asked.

Her smile spread wider and she laughed, her amber eyes dancing brightly. He hadn’t realized how close they’d gotten to each other. Her cheeks bloomed with heat again and as she took a step back his fingers twitched towards her.

“Six-thirty,” she replied, “Outside The Three Broomsticks.

He nodded, feeling his nerves build, wondering just how much he’d gotten himself into. Not only would he, a former Death Eater, the boy who’d let evil wizards into Hogwarts, and killed the beloved Headmaster, be standing again in the Great Hall before a crowd of people who’d prefer to see him in Azkaban, but he would be arriving with their precious Gryffindor princess on his arm and accepting an award for the woman who hosted the Dark Lord in her home.

He stepped towards Granger as she grabbed her coat from the sofa, craving her comforting presence again.

“Granger?” She turned and looked at him questioningly, coat in hand as she pulled it back on over her shoulders. “What did my mother do?”

“Harry should tell you.”

He rolled his eyes to disguise just how infuriating the answer was becoming. She shrugged the rest of her coat on and as she put her hands inside her pocket, she grinned and bounced forward on the soles of her feet.

“Oh! I almost forgot. Here.” 

Granger pulled a green scarf from her pocket. The Harpies scarf. The one Ginny had given to him at the game. 

She held it out towards him expectantly and he was reminded of another time when she held his wand out to him on the steps to the Hogwarts boathouse.

He took the scarf gingerly from her hands, the knit fabric sliding across his palms. 

“You’re giving it to me?”

“Of course,” she replied, “it’s yours. Ginny said you have to wear it to the next match."

“Next match?”

“You and Theo have a standing invitation.”

The fabric twisted in Draco’s hands and he swallowed. 

Everything she did was more than he deserved from her. He wasn’t a good man, but she treated him as a friend, called him a friend, when he’d only been a monster to her. 

Rose would tell him he’s wrong, that he had always been a good man, but she hadn’t known before. Will would tell him that people are constantly evolving and the world was not black and white—but if that was true then Draco was a disastrous mess of gray.

“I hope you don’t mind that I've been wearing it. It’s been crisp out.”

Perhaps Granger saw the gray in him as well. He preferred gray to dark. Gray, at least, had a chance to be light.

Draco took a steadying breath. And a risk. He stepped cautiously forward back into Granger’s space and wrapped the scarf lightly around her neck. 

“You need it more than I do then.” He held up a hand as she tried to protest. “Bring it to me at the next match. That is,” his lips twisted up wryly, “if you don’t send a Howler in your stead.” 

Granger laughed. He stood so close that her breath ghosted across his lips. He leaned his weight forward onto his toes. 

“Alright then,” she said, grinning up at him brightly, “I’ll keep it warm for you.”

Draco slid his hand down the scarf, letting it drop lightly onto Granger’s chest, imagining the feeling of that scarf, warmed by her, wrapping around his own shoulders. He looked up and met her eyes, watching him intently.

He cleared his throat and took two steps back. “I—shouldn’t have said what I did that day. I’m—”

The word caught in Draco’s throat. _Come on_ , he urged himself. _Say it. Apologize for this one little thing and work your way up to the bigger one._ But his tongue wouldn’t move, his lips pressed together as if by a charm.

“It’s alright,” she said, “I snapped back at you unfairly and Theo was being a dick.”

A laugh burst from him unexpectedly at the crude word and she smirked. 

“And I shouldn’t have thanked you the way I did,” she continued, “It came off… arrogant.” She wrinkled her nose and Draco had the sudden urge to smooth his finger over it. “I’ve been told I do that when I only mean to compliment.”

Draco laughed again and shook his head. “You have every right to be arrogant, Granger. I was Snape’s favorite and even then I couldn’t get him to give me higher marks over your talent.”

She looked away and blushed again, a smile tugging at her lips. She gestured towards her front door and he followed her out of her flat.

“So, how did you find my flat anyway?” she asked as they reached her front gate.

“She-Weasel,” he replied, holding the gate open for her. “I remembered you said you lived nearby Potter. I Apparated in a… fury—that’s the only place I could think of.” He cringed, ducking his head at his anger from less than an hour ago. “I must have startled her. She was outside with her spawn. She told me where to go.”

Granger stopped digging through her bag and looked up, one brow raised. “Ginny told you—in your state—where I lived?”

He shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “She also warned me that she would check on you in an hour. If you were dead, she would burn me alive with Fiendfyre.”

“That sounds more like her,” Granger laughed and checked her watch, “Well, your time is almost up, so I guess I should stop by her place before work.”

“I’ll see you around, Granger,” he said, nodding to her. He hesitated for a beat, but turned, leaving for the Apparition spot down the block. 

“Malfoy!” she called to him. He spun around. “Rolf—in Magical Creatures—told me the other day that someone is keeping a Kelpie in Lake Michigan illegally.” She tilted her head. “Do your friends have room on their Reserve?”

Draco brushed down the back of his cap, the brim pulling up so he could see Granger more clearly in the morning light. She waited for him to respond, her hand tugging on the beaded bag’s strap over her shoulder. 

He was surprised that she had thought of Rose and Will. They felt so far away from him.

“I’ll let Will know.” He swallowed heavily and said, “Thank you. Granger.”

She smiled and nodded, turning down the street towards Grimmauld Place. He watched her walk away, wondering how she had been able to take him from spitting anger to remarkably calm in the span of an hour when, years ago, the sight of her frizzy curls alone had been enough to sour his mood and ruin his day. Marveling at how she was able to make him feel like he was hit by a bludger with only one smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ngl, this might be my favorite chapter.
> 
> I feel awful for how long I've left you hanging! I'm so sorry! Life got away from me in a really bad way, but hopefully, things will turn around soon.
> 
> UPDATE: Chapter 8 is delayed. Will be posted by 11/24.


	8. Define Date

####  **April 2003 | Covent Garden, London**

“Draco!”

The soft blue eyes of Rose O’Brien shone against the Floo flames that surrounded her floating head. Draco knelt before his flat’s fireplace and his heart tugged at the sight of his friend. He felt desperate to cross through the flames and return home. 

If someone had asked him five years ago if he would miss sleeping in a drafty room on a rickety twin-sized bed, he’d probably have sneered in their face. But now that warm kitchen with the scratched wooden table and mismatched chairs seemed like the finest estate his galleons could buy.

“We miss you,” Rose continued, her head tilted in the flames as she observed him with a small smile.

“I miss you both, too.” The words fell from his lips without a thought, surprising him. He didn’t think he’d ever said those words to someone before. “Where’s Will?”

“He’s out with Chroma,” Rose explained, “She’s been out of sorts since you left. Will’s been trying to get her more used to him.”

Draco frowned, a mixture of jealousy and concern flooding him. Jealousy that Chroma would bond with Will over him and concern for her care. Concern won out.

“She doesn’t like to be approached from her wingless side,” he reminded Rose quickly, “And her meat has to be perfectly skinned—”

Rose smiled affectionately. “He knows, D.”

Draco rolled his lips between his teeth and nodded. Of course, he did. Chroma had been there long before Draco had arrived. 

“I’m sorry I haven’t called before now, Rose.”

She shook her head, her wavy, honey-brown hair swinging back and forth against the emerald fire. “Has it been difficult for you to be back?”

He bit his cheek, considering his words. “It’s been…”

It’s been as easy as putting on old robes. It’s been as hard as trying to cast a Patronus surrounded by a hundred Dementors. It’s been filled with second chances, handshakes, and closure. Brown curls, firewhisky eyes, and green scarves.

“Hm?” Rose intoned, a curious gleam to her eyes.

Draco cleared his throat and changed the subject. 

“A… friend,” he swallowed heavily at the word. _Too much and yet not enough._ “She gave me a tip about a kelpie in Lake Michigan. She says it’s being kept there illegally. You’ll tell Will?”

“Of course,” Rose nodded, and her eyes twinkled, “Is this friend the same girl? Who came to the Reserve in February?”

It took less than a second for Draco’s eyes to shoot from the green flames to the mantle above him and back again, but Rose knew the tic too well. She grinned mischievously.

“She sounds like a smart girl,” Rose mused to herself, “Hm. Smart. Curly, brown hair.” Draco could imagine her ticking the qualities off on her fingers as she listed them. “She doesn’t happen to be the same Muggle-born girl you told me about years ago, does she?”

Draco bit his cheek again and forced his telling-eyes to remain forward, remembering his first baseball game when Rose had asked if he’d ever met Muggles before. He’d replied that he had only once— if Lucius and Arthur Weasley brawling in front of Granger’s parents before Second Year in Diagon Alley counted. Words had followed after, tumbling out of Draco unwittingly about how Rose always reminded him of Granger— in both looks and mind. 

He had yet to respond to Rose, but it seemed that she didn’t need him to. 

“I recall you saying you weren’t friends.” She smirked. “‘Fuck no,’ I believe it was.”

 _Because I don’t want to be._ He bit his tongue. But in which direction did he not want to be? _Too much and not enough._

“It’s new,” he grumbled instead.

New and disrupting. He’d woken again this morning from a dream, no longer transforming from a nightmare or memory, but his cock still hard and his head full of shame, biting back groaning her name as he finished himself off in the shower. 

Rose chuckled and Draco's lips couldn’t help tugging upwards at the sound of her laugh. His heart was torn, wanting desperately to be back home.

“Well, she’s very pretty—”

“Rose—”

“You could do with some _fun_ if you know what I mean.”

Draco blanched. He scowled quickly to hide his reaction as images from last night's dream and this morning’s shower flooded his mind. Always as if Rose could read his mind.

“I’m extinguishing this call.”

Rose’s head tilted back against the flames and she laughed. “Alright, alright.”

They both fell silent and Draco knew his friend's eyes were boring a hole into his skull as he watched the flames flicker. Rose sighed.

“Even though I wish you were here, I’m glad you did this, D,” she said, “I’ve been worried about you. Ignoring your past like you have.”

Draco kept his gaze down at the fireplace grate and flicked a glowing wood chip back into the flames. 

“Ignoring it,” he scoffed, “I can’t change what happened or what I did. So what else am I supposed to do?”

“I’m not asking you to change it,” Rose replied, “I’m asking you to acknowledge it. You can’t change what happened, no, but you’re not the same person you were. You’ve been letting this anger fester inside of you for too long. You need to ask yourself: who are you angry at?”

“Right now? You. For this conversation.”

Rose gave him an exasperated look. “Who are you angry at, Draco?”

His father. His mother. Bellatrix. Snape. Dumbledore. Potter. Everyone who ever overlooked Draco. 

But none of those felt right. Lucius was suffering in Azkaban and Draco is currently draining his Gringotts vault. That should satisfy his anger, right? Narcissa had been alone in the Manor and passed without him. Should that not be punishment enough? Bellatrix, blown to bits by a blood traitor. Snape murdered by his own master’s pet. Dumbledore dead. Potter—well, he would always be annoyed at Potter.

Every one of them suffered in some way. So why does his anger not feel satisfied?

“I’m angry at myself.” The words came out choked as if they struggled to remain inside his throat.

Rose nodded. “It’s time to stop punishing yourself, Draco.” It was Rose speaking, but Granger’s voice echoed in his mind. _Don’t punish yourself, Malfoy._ “Let go of the past you can’t change. Make your life what _you_ want it to be.”

What he wanted it to be? He didn’t yet know what that was. Was that pureblood Malfoy heir or magical creature caretaker? Was it former teenage-Death Eater or—he swallowed heavily at the thought—friend of one-third of the Golden Trio?

In the past month, he’d gotten himself invited to a party honoring fallen heroes on the opposite side of the war he fought on, somehow befriended the girl his side tried multiple times to kill, and he still didn’t know what his mother did to earn an award from Harry-fucking-Potter. How could he be sure of who he was—or what his life could be—with all of that?

“Listen, Rose, I have to meet Theo for lunch. I’ll write to you soon. Tell Will…”

“I’ll give him your love.” 

Draco nodded. His friend was always good at reading him, at knowing when to give him space to think. But she was also usually the cause of that, knowing best how to completely throw him off balance—save one other brown-haired woman.

Rose’s hand appeared before her, blowing a kiss, and her face dissolved. The emerald flames fell to the bottom of the grate, the dying embers glowing scarlet.

* * *

“Theo, why did you pick a Muggle restaurant?”

Theo sighed dramatically at Draco’s question and filled his teacup from the porcelain kettle in the middle of the table. His dark hair was swooped back in a messy stylized way, one that Draco could only mimic through charms Theo had never needed. He’d joined Draco at the restaurant straight from _The Daily Prophet_ office, wearing black pressed trousers and a white-button down sans tie, his outer robe transfigured into a jacket and draped over the back of his chair.

“What is it with purebloods' fear of trying different food?”

Draco rolled his eyes. It was true that house-elves cooked a majority of their food growing up on pureblood estates, the Wizarding World at large not having many magically-specific restaurants to choose from, but that hadn’t been his question. 

“Mate, I’ve had Thai before,” Draco replied, “I meant why a Muggle restaurant by my flat and not closer to the _Prophet_ office?”

“You should get out of that flat more. Explore the Muggle neighborhood.”

Draco filled his own teacup, scowling both at his friend's comment and the green tea their waiter had left at their table. He preferred black. 

“Why is that? I’m not going to be here long. I leave for America not long after the gala and my father’s Gringotts account fully transfers to the giants' fund.”

Theo hummed at that and sipped his tea, staring at the white-blonde wizard over the rim of his cup. 

Draco opted to leave his baseball cap at home, seeing as Theo chose a Muggle venue Draco hadn’t felt the need to hide his identifying hair from view, but he was very quickly missing the comfort of the curved brim that would have perfectly blocked his eyes from his friend’s discerning gaze. 

Draco wore his usual flannel button-down and jeans. The restaurant grew hot with the steam from boiling soup and frying vegetables, and he rolled up his sleeves to his elbow. He placed his left arm in his lap, unconsciously and habitually hiding the Dark Mark from view. 

“So… ” Theo drew out the vowel and sipped again at his tea. 

Draco raised a brow. He knew that tone. 

“Whatever it is you’re about to ask,” he said, cutting the dark-haired wizard off, “the answer is no.”

“Ah? So, you’re not taking Granger as your date to the gala?”

Draco sputtered his tea back into his cup. Very undignified. The porcelain slipped a few centimeters from his fingers and clattered against the table. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his mother probably rolling in her grave as he did so. 

“How the bloody—” 

“Ginevra talks,” Theo said, waving away Draco’s bewilderment.

“And which one of you called it a fucking _date_?”

 _Friends. They’re going as friends._ Granger had made that very clear.

“Gin,” Theo replied, as he refilled his teacup. “She told me Hermione stopped by before work the other day and said you two decided to go together.”

Then why did Draco hold a tiny hope that Granger had been the one to use the word _date_? 

_Too much and not enough._

“We are attending the gala we were both already invited to…” Draco fumbled to finish the sentence so it wouldn’t sound like a date. “Together.”

At the smirk on Theo’s face, he knew he failed.

“As friends,” Draco emphasized.

Theo’s smirk deepened. 

Their ordered food arrived at the table then, saving Draco from further humiliation. He pulled his chopsticks apart roughly.

“And do you know what color she’ll be wearing so you can coordinate your dress robes?” Theo teased.

Draco shifted uncomfortably in his seat and shoved some noodles in this mouth to delay his response. He swallowed heavily and took another sip of tea.

“I don’t have dress robes yet actually,” he muttered.

Theo’s own utensils fell to his bowl with a clatter.

“Draco. Mate. The gala is just days away.”

“I know—”

“You better not be bailing—”

Draco tightened his fist around his chopsticks. “Of course, I’m not bailing—”

“What do you expect to do—”

“I have dress robes at the Manor—”

Theo continued to ignore him as Draco’s temper grew. 

“What would Narcissa say about you showing up to a _gala_ in your,” he gestured helplessly at Draco, “plaid and a baseball hat—”

Draco slammed his fist down on the table. “ _Well, she’s dead, isn’t she, Theo?_ ”

Theo snapped his mouth shut and silence descended on the restaurant as Draco’s voice rang in his own ears. The waiter coming over to replace their empty tea kettle scurried away and the other lunch patrons furtively glanced in their direction. 

Draco’s chest heaved. Theo’s frown deepened and he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.

“My mother is dead,” Draco ground out, his voice now low, “and my father might as well be, so don’t—”

His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. His left arm rested on the table, his hand still clenched in a fist from when he’d slammed it down. The Dark Mark, grayed out as it was, seemed to almost burn black again. He closed his eyes, sighing, and brought his arm to his lap, hiding the scarred tattoo from view once more. 

He turned back to Theo. “I have robes at the Manor. I don’t care if they’re seasons old.”

Theo shook his head and leaned forward, crossed arms resting on their table. “Draco… I don’t care about last season robes—” He shook his head again. “But, the Manor? Why don’t you just go to Madam Malkin’s?”

“I’d rather not deal with the staring or the _Prophet_ photographers.”

“I’ll call off the _Prophet_.” Draco raised one brow and Theo sighed. “Yeah, okay. I’ll go with you to the Manor then.”

“No,” Draco snapped, and he winced at the look on his friend’s face. Breathing deeply to calm his temper, he tried again. “No, thank you, Theo, but I’ll go alone. I think I need to.”

He _knew_ he needed to. Maybe it would offer some clarity. He’d felt torn lately, just as he had on the call with Rose, between wanting to be home on the Reserve and feeling like he was _already_ home. 

Maybe being in the Manor again, with all its ghosts and horrors, would remind him why he left for America in the first place. 

Or maybe it would remind him why he would sometimes lie awake in his cramped bedroom listening to Will snore through the walls and missing gardens and peacocks, castles, and the green tint of the Black Lake lighting his dorm.

Theo nodded once and picked up his chopsticks. He poked at his noodles while Draco returned to his own meal, scowling into his bowl. 

“It’s not going to be the same,” Theo murmured after a few bites in silence. He glanced up at Draco, concerned eyes watching his pale friend. “The Manor, I mean.”

Draco bobbed his head and kept his eyes down as he spoke. “It hasn’t been for years, mate.”

* * *

####  **April 2003 | The Burrow**

Usually, for Hermione, Sundays at the Burrow were at the same time both dreaded and loved. On the one hand, she adored her adopted wizarding family and all of her friends. 

On the other, the old home would never be big enough to house the growing lot of them, no matter how many extension enchantments Arthur and Molly cast. After an hour or two of screaming toddlers and even louder Weasleys, Hermione usually felt a headache coming on.

However, by some miracle that afternoon, she arrived through the Floo to a mostly empty sitting room. 

Harry and Ron sat on the floor, a game of Wizard’s Chess between them. As Hermione brushed some loose ash off her arms, Harry looked up at her and smiled, bringing a finger to his lips and pointing to the bassinet that stood near the sofa. She stepped softly to it, peering over at the sleeping baby James, looking more and more like her best friend as the child grew. 

“Everyone else will be here later for dinner,” Harry whispered, reading the question in her eyes. 

His long hair was tied back in a knot at his neck, tendrils escaping as the day went on, and he wore an old Muggle football jersey. It looked like one he had inherited from his cousin, and if he had been younger it may have been too big for him, but his grown muscles and broad shoulders now filled the shirt out.

An amused smile escaped Hermione’s lips at the sight. Famous Harry Potter had an overflowing Gringotts vault and was still hopeless when it came to buying clothes. 

Hermione wore her usual weekend attire: oversized wool cardigan over a plain t-shirt and denim jeans, beaded bag as usual over her shoulder, filled with too many books and unnecessary items she couldn’t bear to remove.

She pulled the bag from over her shoulder, her loose hair pulled to one side as it caught on the strap. She’d given up trying to control it that morning as the rain that had fallen all night and day refused to let up. 

Ron, whose own ginger hair was cropped short again, waved a knit jumper-covered hand in greeting. His gaze, however, was fixed firmly on the chessboard, the pieces shuffling wearily as he strategized his next move. 

“Ginny has been trying to get him to sleep for hours,” Harry continued, gesturing to the cradle. 

“Knight to queen's bishop three,” Ron said softly, “And _quietly_.” 

The knight looked up at Ron and seemed to huff, shooing the pawn out of the way rather than destroying it. 

Hermione sat on the opposite end of the sofa from where the bassinet stood and stretched her legs out across the cushions. Not for a second would she waste this rare and quiet moment with her friends at the Burrow. She pulled a book from her beaded bag and settled back against a lumpy throw pillow, silently thanking Merlin that Ginny and Harry had James. If it wasn’t for the cooing sleeping baby, she almost felt like a teenager again in the Gryffindor common room.

A strained groan from Ron as Harry captured another of his pawns drew Hermione’s eye and a movement at the sitting-room door made her jump. A blonde flash. She sucked in a breath.

 _Malfoy_?

The blonde head back-tracked and Luna appeared in the doorway, long golden hair pulled into a braid down her spine. She waved at Hermione, charm bracelets clinking. Hermione’s heart raced and she quickly schooled her face back into a friendly smile, lifting a hand in return. 

_Malfoy_ , she scoffed internally. The improbability of his appearance in the Burrow was about as high as her and Ron getting back together. But the thought had skipped across her head and heart all the same. 

They had parted ways outside her flat only a few short days ago, but he had yet to leave her mind. She played that morning over and over in her head as if she could parse new meaning from it or discover a gesture she hadn’t noticed before.

Molly called to Luna from the kitchen and she skipped out of sight, away from the door.

“Mum’s been trying to go over every little detail of the wedding with Luna,” Ron muttered, rubbing his scruffy chin as his bishop tip-toed to his directed space. “It’s driving Mum mental.”

Hermione chuckled appropriately, but absentmindedly, her photographic memory once again scrolling through the other day in her flat as if she was fast-forwarding a video.

Her heart had been wrenched for Draco when he said couldn’t do it, couldn’t go to Hogwarts. Secretly though, she felt the same. She’d been lying awake each night fearing the moment she would have to return to that castle since leaving it for good. Eighth Year had felt like a foggy dream as she attended class after class, wandering the corridors filled with ghosts she couldn’t see.

She had tried not to ask, but the words had spilled out of her with nervous energy. 

_Go with me?_

Despite the way he had left it, she’d actually enjoyed his company at the Quidditch match and, honestly, she feared going to the gala alone. Her friends would be there, sure, but she didn’t want to rely on them for their support when others would need them more. The gala would be honoring Fred that night too, and although Hermione was an honorary member of the family, she would need to be a support to the Weasleys, not the other way around.

But Malfoy would have no one there for support. Perhaps they could help each other.

_As friends. Obviously._

Her stomach squirmed at the memory of his frown. He’d seemed upset she would even ask him, and why should she be surprised by that? Hermione shifted uncomfortably on the sofa and brought her feet up, knees bent and feet flat on the cushion. Why was she disappointed by that?

Her mind sped forward again, reaching the moment he’d teased her about cutting to the front of her line of suitors. As if he had been one of those suitors. Her stomach squirmed for a different reason now and she felt a familiar blush blooming across her cheeks again as she recalled how he had asked when to pick her up for the gala. How he had stepped closer to her. How his fingers brushed her neck as he wrapped the scarf around her, dragging sparks across her skin. How even though the weather was warming up she carried that scarf with her everywhere. 

Her eyes flicked to the beaded bag on the floor beside her.

Another quiet exclamation from Ron had her quickly shifting focus back to her book. She frantically tried to find the paragraph she had left off as if she had been caught.

“So, what are you going to wear next week?” Ginny asked as she entered the sitting room. She fell heavily on the opposite end of the sofa from Hermione and placed a bare foot on the base of the bassinet, rocking it slowly.

Hermione hummed to acknowledge she heard her friend but didn’t look up from her book, eyes glued to the page, but not taking in any information. 

“Wear what?”

Ginny flicked at Hermione’s feet which rested near the ginger woman’s thighs. 

“To the gala, Hermione.” 

Hermione made no move or sound in response and Ginny pulled the book away from her, rolling her eyes. 

“Hermione, you have got to wear something amazing. With _Malfoy_ as your date—”

Honestly, Hermione was surprised she didn’t hear their necks break with how fast Ron and Harry’s heads swiveled to the two women on the sofa, chess set on the floor between them immediately forgotten.

“ _What?_ ” Ron shouted.

“Ron, you’ll wake James,” Harry whispered, rubbing at his neck, evidently having cricked it. 

“Sod that!” 

“Ronald!” Ginny shouted in return over James’ awakened cries. She leaned into the bassinet, frantically shushing her screaming child and shooting daggers at her brother.

Ron ignored Ginny completely. 

“She’s joking, Hermione,” Ron said. Less of a question, more of a plea.

Hermione chewed on her cheek, grimacing at both the crying baby and being unable to come up with an answer that would pacify her ex-boyfriend slash best friend slash Malfoy’s public enemy number two.

“Define _date_?” she asked sheepishly.

“Two people getting dressed up and going to a really fancy party together,” Ginny replied succinctly. She leaned back and crossed her arms, once again rocking the bassinet beside the sofa with her foot as James quieted down to soft coos.

“It’s a work function, technically,” Hermione countered, “and we’re going together as _friends_. We made that clear.”

“Who made that clear? You or him?”

“Who cares! Your _date_ ,” Ron shuttered, “to the gala is _Malfoy_?”

“It’s not a date, Ron. He was invited to the gala anyway. We’re just… arriving together.”

“So the two people,” Ginny mused, one finger tapping her chin, “who spent most of my Quidditch match in their own little corner, laughing and talking, are going to a glitzy gala together, but it’s, very clearly, not a date.”

Hermione sputtered. “We did not spend—”

Ginny smirked and cut her off. “Please. Theo wouldn’t shut up about how cozy you two looked.”

Hermione’s cheeks burned as she recalled the match, how Draco leaned against the shared arm of their seats, how he always seemed to smell like crisp autumn air and freshly brewed tea.

Ron looked between Hermione and his sister confused. “He yelled at her and left! He made fun of your hair again, Hermione.”

“He apologized to me for that.” _Well, he tried to, I think, but I cut him off._

Harry raised a brow. “I thought you two had your little inside joke about not saying ‘sorry.’”

Ginny’s smirk deepened. “You two have an in-joke?”

Hermione waved her friends off. “What does it matter? You make fun of my hair all the time, Ron, and I still dated you.”

Her words echoed in the silent room and Hermione’s face fell as she realized what she’d just said.

“A-HA!” Ginny yelled, pointing a finger in Hermione’s face. Harry roared with laughter on the floor and James woke up, screaming again, as Ron groaned into the neck of his jumper. “You have a date with Malfoy!”

“You’re dating Malfoy, Hermione?” Luna wandered into the room and folded herself down beside her fiance. Ron buried his face in her shoulder and covered his ears.

“No—Luna—I’m not dating Malfoy.” Hermione raised her hands before her as if to ward off the implication from falling on her.

_As friends. Obviously._

Her stomach twisted in knots again.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Luna said, patting Ron on the head, “I’d like to see him again. He treated me very kindly when I was locked in his cellar.”

Ron’s head shot up. “Lune,” he murmured.

Luna looked around at the grim faces of her friends confused. Ginny shushed her crying son, unable to look at anyone. Hermione placed a hand on her friend’s arm. Ginny always blamed herself for Luna’s capture over the Christmas holidays in their Sixth Year, claiming that if she’d been more watchful or made Luna come home to the Burrow with her, Luna wouldn’t have been found.

“He did,” Luna insisted, “Malfoy would bring me extra food when he could, and he told me about my friends at Hogwarts, that you were safe.” She turned to Ginny who looked at her blonde friend with glassy eyes. “He’s the one who told me how to find you and Neville if I was ever able to get back to Hogwarts, where you were hiding everyone.”

The room sat frozen at Luna’s words, realization flooding each of them in turn and Hermione sucked in a sharp breath. 

“Luna,” she gasped, “Are you saying Malfoy knew about the passageway from the Hog’s Head?”

Luna tilted her head curiously. “Of course.”

Hermione locked eyes with Harry and Ron. They didn’t speak, but after all these years, they understood each other clearly. _Ron’s room. After dinner._

* * *

“I don’t believe it,” Ron said as he shut his old bedroom door behind him.

Hermione lit a blue flame in an empty jar and placed it on the floor between them before settling on the corner of his childhood bed. Harry smiled at the flame and leaned his head against her legs.

“You think Luna is lying?” Hermione asked.

Ron held up his hands and sat on the floor across from them. “I love that woman more than anything, but,” he paused, “It is Luna.”

“He knew about the Room of Hidden Things,” Harry mused, “Maybe he knew more about the Room of Requirement than he let on.”

“If that was the case,” Ron countered, “Why repair the cabinet? Why not let the Death Eaters in through Hogsmeade?”

“The Room of Requirement only made that eighth passageway to Aberforth after the students started hiding there,” Hermione reminded him. “He must have found out about it somehow.”

Ron frowned and shrugged, crossing his arms. His usual response to Hermione’s logic.

“The point is,” Hermione continued, “he protected that secret and our friends. He’s very good at Occlumency.” 

She looked down and met Harry’s eyes, knowing he’d understand what she meant. That Snape or Narcissa had taught him well and that Draco had protected his classmates when he had no preconceived notion to. Harry nodded.

She turned her eyes back to the blue flame, watching it flicker and float inside the jar. It jumped and sputtered inconsistently, like Draco, surprising her at every turn. There was more to his story than she ever imagined, more to him. And she couldn’t pretend or lie to herself anymore—she was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. 

Ron groaned from across the floor and laid back on the floor.

“Go to the gala with him then, Hermione,” he said, waving a hand in the air.

Hermione scowled and crossed her arms. 

“Oh, thanks for your permission, Ron,” she quipped.

He tilted his head up at her from where he laid and glared. “But, I am _not_ being friends with another _Slytherin_ ,” he continued, “Theo is my limit.”

Hermione tossed a pillow over her head and Ron huffed as it hit him in the face. Harry burst with laughter, hair escaping his knot and falling forward. 

Hermione bit back a smile as her oldest friends laughed and she wrapped her arms around her stomach, hugging herself close, imagining gray eyes sparking with amused pride as her pillow hit its mark.

* * *

####  **April 2003 | Wiltshire**

The air around the massive iron gates shimmered as Draco stepped near, the wards reacting to his Malfoy blood. His hand reached towards the iron lock—and lowered back down again. He sighed and shook his head frustratingly. 

He stared through the still-locked bars towards the empty browning grass of the grounds. With no Malfoy living on the property—and no house-elves to tend it—the magic keeping the perennial green expanse flourishing had withered. The Manor itself though looked just as it had when he’d left five years ago.

Enormous. Cold. Empty.

And now with Narcissa gone, it was as hollow as it had always felt. 

Back on the Reserve, Draco lived in a two-bedroom ranch home barely big enough to fit Will and Rose and all their things. At first, it was stifling. Draco had spent most of his time outside the home—sitting by the pond, walking the surrounding woods, or watching Chroma as she explored her new corral. After growing up in a manor so large his parents never knew when Theo or Pansy had been over, his continuous desire to escape the cramped timber home only seemed to help the testy hippogriff feel relaxed in his presence.

Eventually, though the claustrophobia-inducing rooms, stuffed full with what seemed like every heirloom or knick-knack that Will and Rose could get their hands on, started to feel to Draco less like the walls were closing in on him and more like a comforting embrace. The scratchy old quilt Rose had given Draco for his bed began to feel like the softest silk.

It was part of the reason why he re-opened the London flat, other than the fact that he vowed never to step foot in Malfoy Manor again.

Now here he was, hesitating outside the gates, too scared to enter his inherited estate because he didn’t have the courage to enter a Diagon Alley shop for new dress robes, frightened as if he was sixteen again and the Dark Lord was still living inside. 

Draco’s fist tightened around his wand. 

Isn’t that the truth though? Isn’t that why he left? The Dark Lord’s presence would never truly leave the Manor. No amount of _scourgify_ or _evanesco_ could remove the Muggle blood that had seeped into the wood of the dining room table from the people he’d tortured. Every brush against the marble floors would be that fucking snake slithering after her master. Every peel of laughter—if anyone could even laugh inside those haunted rooms anymore—would be the cackle of Aunt Bella as she inflicted pain on a new victim.

There had been good memories here though. Right? At one time.

Draco shut his eyes and tried to dig deep in his mind for them. His father gifting him a new broom on his sixth birthday and allowing him, just this once, to ride it around the ballroom. Sneaking Theo in through the Floo late at night on Christmas break and nicking a bottle of Lucius’s finest firewhisky. Pansy dragging him, willingly, away from his mother’s New Year's Eve party in Fifth Year and fucking her for the first time. Falling on the floor in drunken hysterics with Blaise as they watched Crabbe attempt to seduce Daphne Greengrass.

Draco opened his eyes and scowled. No, even the good memories have become soured; Crabbe burned alive in his own Fiendfyre, and Draco hasn’t spoken to Blaise or Pansy since he left the country, unwilling as they were to change their prejudices after the war.

An owl hooted in the distance, drawing his attention back to the Manor. Dusk was arriving, descending over the grounds and throwing the darkened windows into shadow. The tall pointed towers dripped red from the setting sun. Draco dropped his eyes to the gravel drive below him, not particularly liking the symbolism the blood-red stone provided him.

“I don’t want this,” Draco murmured. He turned his eyes to the drive beyond the iron bars. The air shimmered again as he drew nearer, the wards around the grounds reacting to him. He imagined his father beyond the gates, shimmering into view, a perpetual sneer frozen on his face. 

The same vicious look as the last time Draco saw him, exiting the Wizengamot courtroom just after his sentencing, escorted in chains to the boat that would take him to Azkaban. Lucius hadn’t spared a glance toward his wife and son who had waited outside the courtroom for him. Draco had looked to his mother for any emotion, any care, that her husband, who had just been sentenced to life in prison, had spurned his last chance to see his family. But she remained stoic as ever, lips pursed and eyes blank.

“I don’t want this place,” Draco hissed. Lucius’ sneer deepened, his long hair lank against his shoulders and shadows gripping the pits of his eyes. “I don’t want any part of you anymore.”

A vision of his mother shimmered into view beside his father. Narcissa, by comparison, looked flawless as ever. The perfect image of a pureblood wife and mother. Draco’s breath stuttered and he swallowed thickly. His hand pushed through the iron bars, reaching for his mother, but she only looked up at Lucius proudly.

Perfect pureblood wife and mother. Obedient, proud, and silent. Just as when her only child screamed while the Dark Lord branded his arm with fire and ink.

Draco clenched his hand into a fist and let it fall back to his side. This—this was the clarity he needed. This was not his home, and he would return to the Reserve as soon as he could. 

Draco turned his back on the image of his parents and walked down the endless drive, Disapparting with a sharp crack.

He would just borrow dress robes from Theo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always for reading, comment, kudo-ing, subscribing, and bookmarking, even when I can't keep up with my own promised schedule! I truly, truly appreciate it. I never thought I'd get as much love as I do from posting this story that started as just a way to keep my anxiety down during a pandemic, but here we are!  
> 
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> Scream, Scream, Scream | Ludo  
> peace | Taylor Swift  
> Gun Song | The Lumineers (Draco's song)


	9. Alright

####  **October 1998 | Hogwarts**

The waters of the Black Lake were as smooth as glass. The gray day reflected morosely against it, turning the normally green-ish waters the color of its name. Not even a breeze allowed it to lap up to the shore where Hermione rested. 

She sat on her knees, leaning forward to observe her reflection in the lake. Her curls fell forward across her shoulders, lank from lack of washing and frizzed from how much she had anxiously dragged her fingers through them.

It was a habit she couldn’t contain lately. She would come back to herself, discovering curls wrapped around each of her fingers as her eyes refocused, coming out of whatever thoughts or memory she had fallen into. 

She’d tried Occlumency, in an effort to curb the number of times she would wander through her broken memories, but she found it difficult to keep herself contained behind walls.

She opted instead for something she knew she was good at—organization; writing down her thoughts in categorized mental notebooks. Journaling, almost. In a non-physical sense. It helped and she got better, but the problem was that the notebooks were always there. Always open. Mental quill hovering and waiting for her never-ceasing mind to take note.

Hermione tilted her head, her reflection mimicking her. She had dark circles under her eyes and her lips were losing color from the autumn chill. She'd dropped to the shore early that morning, just after breakfast and now, beyond the gray clouds, the sun was lowering past the top of the Forbidden Forest. Almost sunset.

She watched as her reflection raised a hand and dropped a cork into the water, ripples pushing out from the disturbance and distorting her face. She tilted her head the other way as the ripples marred her reflection.

_That’s better._

“Hermione?” 

Hermione sat back on her heels again as Ginny crouched beside her, careful not to let the knees of her school-sanctioned socks touch the wet grass. The dew from this morning had long soaked into Hermione’s own socks and skirt. The afternoon mist that clung to the lawn surrounding the Black Lake barely registered to her. 

Ginny’s red hair was getting longer, straight and thin, pulled back into an effortlessly messy ponytail that would have made Hermione look like she’d just rolled out of bed, but looked elegantly wind-swept on Ginny. She’d always been jealous of that. 

“Neville said you weren’t in classes again today.” Ginny’s hand reached towards Hermione, but she pulled it back and sighed. “You can’t keep missing class like this. McGonagall—”

Hermione snorted. “McGonagall will do what exactly?” 

She twisted the bottom of a half-empty firewhisky bottle against the ground, digging it into the earth beside her knees. Corkless—she’ll just have to finish it off now. 

“It’s not like she’ll hold me back. It’s not like the fucking _Golden Girl_ can’t get a job anywhere I ask.”

The Golden Girl. Gryffindor Princess. War Hero. All of these names were given to Hermione unasked for. Brightest Witch of Her Age. Expectations hoisted upon her that she didn’t know if she could fulfill anymore. 

What if she didn’t have it in her to fulfill anymore?

It’s not as if Hermione couldn’t pass all of her classes, and it’s not as if all of her professors didn’t know that already. They _expected_ her to pass, to exceed expectations. 

They expected her to return to class as if they hadn’t fought a battle in these hallways. 

So she didn’t go to class. She didn’t bother with homework. She drank. All very anti-Hermione actions. And it felt _good_. Not to continue on as if everything was the same when it very. Clearly. Wasn’t.

She punctuated each thought with a slam of her bottle against the grass.

She shouldn’t have returned to Hogwarts. 

Ginny didn’t respond. Instead, she dropped her arse on the wet grass and grabbed the bottle from Hermione, taking a swig.

They were silent—Hermione didn’t know for how long. Seconds? Minutes? Her eyes didn’t leave the mirror glass of the Black Lake. It reminded her of the obsidian polished marble of the Ministry courtrooms, of how long she spent there over the summer; providing witnesses, testimonies. Defending.

She had been forced to relive every terrible moment of the year prior in those dark, reflective rooms. The worst had been Malfoy’s defense, recounting the night in the drawing room. Hermione had done it because she believed in doing what was right, but it cost her, having to relive her torture in order to recall the moments in between that saved Malfoy and Narcissa from Azkaban. 

Hermione dug a nail into the scarred ‘b’ on her right arm as Ginny took another swig from the bottle.

When McGonagall had arrived at Grimmauld Place after the trials with the offer to return to Hogwarts, to complete their education, Hermione had jumped at it. She would’ve taken the offer no matter what, even knowing that Harry and Ron would decline—because it was what she knew she should do. She’d hoped that returning to a routine, a sense of normality would help her frayed nerves and mind. 

McGonagall had only nodded with an indulging smile on her lips before she turned to the boys.

Because the question and the offer hadn’t been for Hermione. Of course, she would return to school. She was Hermione Granger, after all.

That smile from McGonagall, the one she used to crave receiving from her elders when she was a child, was beginning to feel condescending as an adult.

When Hermione had arrived at the castle that first day of what was supposed to have been her Seventh Year, and sat at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall, sans Harry and Ron, all she saw were images from only a couple short months prior, branded into her brain forever: _The Weasleys huddled over Fred. The Malfoys, frightened and lost, in the corner. Pomfrey frantically pouring a blood rejuvenation potion down Lavender’s throat to no effect. Colin lying on a cot._

Everything in that Hall seemed to take her breath from her, to swirl her vision and make her fingers numb: the floating candles; the tall, stained glass windows where Snape fled from; the throne-like chair where a gentle, funny old man should be sitting which instead held a stern but kindly, old woman. 

It was only after Ginny and Neville, on either side of her, gripped her hands beneath the table that she realized they had been violently shaking in her lap and she had started hyperventilating.

Her roommates had taken to silencing her four-poster bed each night, never knowing when she’d wake, screaming in the darkness.

A bang and a burst of laughter echoed from over the hill to their left, near Hagrid’s cottage, and stabbed Hermione in the heart. She caught her breath, her chest heaving. A spot of blood dripped from the ‘b’ on her arm where she had ripped her hand away to grab her wand, now trained on the hill.

A warm hand covered her other.

Hermione lowered her wand, breathing deeply, and returned her eyes to the Black Lake. She tore her other hand from Ginny's grasp and took a swig from the bottle, holding it to the back of her tongue as she swallowed it slowly, letting it burn her throat.

"Hermione."

“I feel—” Hermione said, gasping from the fire in her throat, the words struggling to leave her lips, but she knew she had to say them. She needed to say them.

“I feel,” she started again, “like those castle walls are closing in on me.” 

She turned to her friend and Ginny met Hermione’s gaze, her own brown eyes shimmering. 

“I feel like I’m suffocating. Like there are ghosts all around me.” Hermione shook her head. “Not like Nick or the Fat Friar. Like—I—” 

She was choking on her own breath, on the spirits she couldn’t see.

“Colin,” Ginny whispered. Hermione’s eyes widened a fraction, but Ginny only nodded, miming taking a deep breath as she continued. “Lavender. Snape. Lupin. Tonks.” Ginny swallowed heavily. “Fred.”

Hermione breathed deeply with Ginny.

“It helps me,” Ginny turned back to the Black Lake, “To say their names out loud.”

Hermione returned her gaze to the lake as well, sitting with Ginny’s voice echoing in her ears, writing down the names of their friends on one of the pages in her mind. Over and over. It would fill an entire notebook by the end of the year.

“I want to hear the click of his camera," Hermione whispered, so softly she wasn’t sure Ginny could hear her, "that obnoxious giggle—fuck, I’d take a 'Won-Won.'”

Ginny chuckled, and Hermione continued.

“I want to see bubble-gum pink hair. Or—or… to be sneered at.”

Ginny nudged Hermione’s shoulder with her own. “By Snape or by Malfoy?”

Malfoy hadn’t returned to complete his last year at Hogwarts. She suspected McGonagall wouldn’t have offered, even if he hadn’t disappeared. There was a rumor he was out of the country, but no one knew where. Theo Nott, the only Slytherin Eighth Year to return, didn’t speak much to anyone, even his own house.

Hermione shrugged. She just wanted to go back to the way things were before. But what did that even mean? Every year at Hogwarts had been protecting Harry, fighting, researching Dark Arts, and trying to get homework done all at the same time. 

_How do we come back from this? After seven years, what even is_ normal _?_

The two girls sat together in silence, passing the bottle of firewhisky back and forth between them. 

“Harry tells me,” Ginny spoke through another sip, “that Teddy is a Metamorphmagus. Like Tonks. He’s taken to changing his hair to bright pink. The first time he did it, Harry said Andromeda burst into tears so violently that he had to snatch the poor baby from her before Teddy fell.”

Hermione knew what her friend was doing; distracting her, trying to remind her of the love and the life that still existed outside their scarred memories. That there was a way to move forward. So she attempted to laugh in response, but it came out more like a choked sob. And then again. And again. And soon her tears were flooding down her face, coating her lips in saltwater. Sobs wrenched from her body as she shoved a hand into her mouth to smother her cries. 

Ginny wrapped her arms around Hermione, pulling her head onto her shoulder. She shushed and rocked them as Hermione sobbed, drenching Ginny’s school robe. 

Finally, after about twenty minutes, her tears had all dried up. Snot was left across Ginny’s shoulder and Hermione wordlessly _scourgified_ it, mumbling an apology. She brushed a hand over her swollen eyes. Her sinuses felt so full from her tears that her head pounded. She avoided her reflection in the lake. 

The two girls sat together in silence, Hermione willing her headache away and Ginny sniffling surreptitiously. Eventually, Ginny vanished the bottle of firewhisky with a few good sips left and stood. Hermione’s brow furrowed, slightly annoyed that she didn’t get to finish her bottle, but when she grabbed Ginny’s hand and was pulled to her feet, her vision swam. Perhaps it was for the best.

Ginny wrapped her arm around Hermione’s waist and directed them back towards the castle. 

“C’mon. Let’s go to the kitchens and harass Kreacher into getting you some dinner.” 

Hermione could only nod, the alcohol reaching her mind now that she was upright and attempting movement. Her body swayed towards Ginny’s form with each step.

“And when you’ve sobered up,” Ginny continued, “We will discuss Hermione Granger skiving off class.”

 _Yes, mum._ The words flashed across Hermione’s mind. It was meant as a joke, but they wouldn’t reach her lips knowing her own mother couldn’t even remember Hermione Granger, much less how much she had loved Hogwarts and classes and learning.

Another notebook fell open in her mind and she began to write a letter, her handwriting just as sloppy as her steps into the castle. 

_I miss you, mum. Does dad sail now? He’s always wanted to sail. Are you still dentists? I took everything away from you. Even that. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

Hermione bobbed her head at Ginny as they walked slowly through the corridors, eyes avoiding the rebuilt walls, the once-animated suits of armor that had defended the castle, and the empty space between Pavarti and Padma where Lavender should have been.

* * *

####  **May 2003 | Hogsmeade**

  
  


Hermione watched the party-goers gather at the edge of Hogsmeade. The thestrals stamped their feet impatiently as they waited for their riders to enter the carriages. The stone parapets and buttresses of Hogwarts rose up from the low hills in the distance; architecture she studiously avoided.

Her breath fogged up the window, creating a circle obscuring the witches and wizards leaving The Three Broomsticks beneath her room. Excited chatter made its way through the glass. 

Hermione took a deep breath— _in through the nose, out through the mouth._ The circle of fog grew larger.

A screech echoed along the street below as two women embraced, bouncing with the unrestrained joy of a reunion. Hermione watched the pair as they left, chatting animatedly and hopping into one of the carriages.

_Not a second glance at the thestral. Lucky._

The fog on the glass had grown enough that she could barely make out the outline of Hogwarts. Good. The less she saw those stone walls, the better she felt.

Hermione hadn’t been back to the castle since she finished her eighth year, barely scraping by from all the classes she’d missed and only because her professors knew how well she had understood the material already. The old Hermione would have called that cheating, accepting unearned grades from her teachers, but now she only felt a twinge of guilt about it. 

The goal of Eighth Year had been surviving the ghosts and nightmares. Anything more than that was over-achieving.

A flash of white passed below her window and Hermione quickly wiped her hand across it, clearing the fog. 

Draco stood near the entrance to the Three Broomsticks. He glanced around at the growing crowd heading for the carriages. The door to the pub opened and he quickly ducked his head. It was no use though. Draco’s bright hair was caught and a wizard eyed him curiously as he moved away towards his carriage.

Hermione’s lips twisted into a mixture of a grimace and a grin. He certainly looked good in his dress robes—black shirt, suit, and cloak with sharp lines that showed off his broad shoulders—but his face was grim. 

Draco’s hand went to his head as another group exited the pub and it seemed to flounder for— _his cap_ , she realized—and instead opted for running his fingers through his hair. He stepped further away from the door.

 _I’m dreading it as well,_ she had told him in her sitting room, back when he had appeared angry outside her flat. She hadn’t been lying.

Hermione straightened up and turned to the mirror, brushing nervously at the non-existent lint on her navy blue dress robes. The dress was floor-length, the fabric flaring subtly at her hips. The thick straps were off-the-shoulder and a pattern of leaves was cut into the collar of the dress, the pattern continuing along her collarbone and down her sternum into a v-cut. The cloak hung from the straps off her shoulder.

It was her favorite dress robe she owned. Ginny had insisted she wear it, but Hermione’s teeth worried at the inside of her cheek as she looked herself over one last time. She waved her wand at the deep V of her dress, casting a sticking charm. Just to be safe.

She’d delayed long enough, positive that Draco had bailed in the time she’d taken to worry once more about how she looked. She left her room and walked quickly down the stairs to the pub. The crowd had mostly dissipated by the time she’d stepped outside and her brow furrowed when she didn’t see that familiar crop of blonde hair.

Hermione whirled back to the door of The Three Broomsticks, wondering for a brief panicked moment if he had bailed, when Draco pushed off the wall of the neighboring shop and stepped forward, eyes wide.

“Six twenty-nine,” Hermione covered her relief with a smirk. “I thought in your posh pureblood society it was better to be fashionably late.”

Draco didn’t rise to the bait. He reached her side and stopped short, his eyes still on her.

“Your hair is down.”

Hermione frowned. “Oh.” _I should’ve listened to Fleur._

She grabbed a curl, twisting it around her finger. Draco’s eyes tracked the movement.

“Yes, well, they asked for _Hermione Granger_ to attend,” Her finger was still trapped in the curl and it pulled taught as she gestured to herself. Her hair fell past her shoulders in wild waves and curls. She hadn’t bothered with any potions or charms to contain it. “So Hermione Granger they’ll get.”

Kingsley and the whole Ministry had been practically shoving the story into the _Prophet’s_ hands: _The Golden Trio would be attending the gala. It was the event of the century. Meet Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley._

It was supposed to be an event honoring those who fought and died, not a fucking meet-and-greet.

Fleur had been positively aghast at the idea when Hermione mentioned she wasn’t going to do much for the gala beyond wearing her best dress robes. Hermione hadn’t even bothered with makeup, really. Just a touch of mascara and some eyeshadow that one could arguably say was the same color as her skin.

Draco’s gaze roved across her form, examining each millimeter of her. A smirk had grown across his lips at her explanation. 

She looked away and wondered suddenly if her notion was less rebellious and more childish until—

“Hermione Granger. Perfect.”

Hermione’s eyes shot back up. Her instinct was to glare, but she realized in the next breath that there had been no hint of sarcasm or facetious tone. 

Draco’s smirk was gone. His throat bobbed and his eyes were wide again as if he hadn’t quite believed those words came from him either.

She had never heard her given name from his lips before. Was it always supposed to sound so silky? _Hermione_. Most people rushed it to three syllables or stumbled over the four, making it sound cumbersome, burdensome to say. _Hermione_. 

A shiver crept up her arms and she pulled her cloak closer around her, despite it being a warm spring night. Her fist tightly bunched around the fabric. 

“Thank you,” she breathed, barely a whisper.

Draco nodded and his throat bobbed again. “By the way, Granger… Blue has always been your color.”

A quill stood poised in her mind, practically vibrating to fill an entire notebook dissecting that sentence. She forcibly set the quill down. She would chew on those words later. _Blue has always been your color._ She closed the notebook and set it aside. _Has always been._ She would have plenty of time to break down each word tomorrow. _Always been._

Draco offered his arm and Hermione wrapped her fingers around it gently, remembering the last time she touched his left arm. His muscles twitched under her hand, but otherwise, he remained solid, only a small dip to his lips as they walked.

* * *

Under her fingers, Draco’s arm tightened and his knuckles grew white. 

The few steps from The Three Broomsticks to the carriages had been a silent trek, and as they’d reached the thestrals, Hermione had turned to Draco, a grimace on her face to equal his own.

“Perhaps we should walk.”

Draco had let out a relieved sigh.

But now the peak of the Astronomy Tower was slowly rising, growing larger on the horizon before them and Draco’s spine was stiff. The entrance to the courtyard, and the doors to the Great Hall just beyond, were cresting the hill. Hermione’s own steps were jerky, halting, as her body pushed her forward but her heart frantically begged her to turn around. 

The pair slowed to a stop just outside the courtyard. The last of the carriages were emptying and a few heads turned at the sight of Malfoy’s white-blonde head, whispering to their counterparts as they marched up the steps to the castle. 

Draco breathed deeply beside her. His chin was raised towards the Astronomy Tower in the distance, eyes glazed and Hermione assumed, Occluded. He didn’t seem to notice the stares of the other guests at least. She placed her other hand on the arm she held, lacing her fingers together. His eyes jerked down as she gave him a squeeze and they wavered only slightly at the sight of her scar, just narrowly visible beneath her cloak.

“Do you need—” She stopped, knowing the next words out of her mouth would be useless. 

_Do you need a minute?_ Of course. Merlin, _she_ needed as many minutes as it took to not enter that castle ever again. 

_Do you need a Calming Draught?_ Godric _, sedate me, please, so I can get through this night._

“Are you alright?” she opted for instead and cringed. Just as stupid. Of course, he wasn’t.

A panicked sort of chuckle burst from his mouth and he quickly pressed his lips together.

“Yeah.” Hermione grinned wryly. “Sor—”

A quick glance from the corner of his eyes had her pressing her own lips shut and she gave him a rueful shrug. 

Draco swallowed heavily, his eyes tracing the courtyard. It was lit in the setting sun by actual fairies and was surrounded by carved stone containers bursting with flowers. Patches of grass held granite benches and in the center was a statue of an old wizard Hermione couldn’t quite bring herself to look at. 

“I—” Draco’s arm jerked as his eyes landed on the statue. “I haven’t been here since—” 

“I know.”

“It was all destroyed, rubble—”

“Yeah.”

“They put—”

“Some benches.”

“How did you survive Eighth—”

“I didn’t.”

Another sideways glance and Hermione gave his arm another squeeze. She gathered her skirt in her other hand as she stepped into the courtyard. He followed reluctantly.

“You may find it interesting,” Her voice was light as they crossed the courtyard. “that during Eighth Year I had a _deep,_ deep love of firewhisky and a penchant for skipping all of my classes.”

Draco gave an indelicate snort. “ _You_ skipped class?”

“I know. Shocking.”

“Not surprised you still passed. It’s not like the professors wouldn’t have given _you_ an Outstanding even if you handed in blank parchment.”

Hermione tapped him on the shoulder. “That’s what _I_ said!” 

Beyond the Occluded glaze, Draco’s eyes betrayed his amusement, but as they reached the short steps up to the castle, Hermione’s smile fell. 

“If I’m being honest, I regret returning. It was nothing but painful memories.”

As if on cue, giggling and chittering above them had Hermione’s eyes shooting upward. Heads were appearing and disappearing through the carved open windows of the third-floor corridor—students who had snuck out of their common rooms for a chance to see the Ministry elite and war heroes. 

Draco’s jaw worked as he studiously stared straight ahead.

A memory from last month struck Hermione. _I let in those monsters to teach their children. There are still First Years there that lived through the Carrows’ detentions…_

She tugged on Draco’s arm, directing his attention to her as they reached the castle stairs.

“Those that are still here were only First or Second Years at the time,” she whispered, “I doubt they remember. Children… they’re good at bouncing back.”

“We were children, Granger.” His teeth clacked as spoke, his jaw clenched. “Did we bounce back?”

Hermione didn’t have an answer. She looked away as a Prefect popped through the window and pulled the younger kids back inside. 

Finally, they entered the castle. There were at least twenty different couples and groups greeting friends and colleagues in the corridor to the Great Hall. It seemed smaller than Hermione remembered. The walls seemed narrower. She could hear delicate string music and the murmur of conversation drifting from the Hall.

Draco cleared his throat as they walked through the crowd. Hermione peeked up at him out of the corner of her eye. His lips were pressed thin and his eyes glanced quickly from person to portrait to staircase. 

“Are you alright?” She winced. How many times would she ask such a stupid question?

“Yes. Fine.” He cleared his throat again and sighed. He met her eyes as they walked, a wry and uncomfortable smile on his lips. “It all just feels strange. Being here again. In dress robes, for Salazar’s sake.” He paused. “You on my arm.” 

Hermione didn’t know why her stomach dropped dismally at that last one. 

Draco turned his head to face her fully and his wry smile became a wide, teasing grin. “Maybe I should sneer at you for something.” 

She let out a breath as an old memory pecked at her.

_“I want to see bubble-gum pink hair. Or—or… to be sneered at.”_

_A playful nudge. “By Snape or by Malfoy?”_

_A shrug and a yearning for something that felt familiar, normal._

“Well,” Hermione replied, “if it helps you at all, I’ve actually already worn this dress robe to another event. You could sneer at me for such a fashion faux pas.”

He glanced down at her again, his lips now pressed as if to hide a laugh. “Oh, I can’t sneer at you for that, Granger,” He gestured to himself. “When I’m wearing Theo’s dress robes.” 

A bubble of laughter burst from Hermione’s lips and a couple to their left jumped, heads whipping around at the sound. Hermione clamped a hand over her mouth and Draco shook with silent laughter. The man gave an exasperated huff and turned away. 

His date, however, a witch in impeccable plum dress robes and who looked not that much older than Hermione, kept glancing furtively at the two of them. Wide-eyed, the woman whispered in her date’s ear. 

“It seems we’ve been found out.” Draco’s lips brushed Hermione’s ear, sending shivers down her neck. She turned her head to find his face bent towards her. Her eyes flicked to his lips and when they returned to his own eyes, she saw them crinkle—she’d been found out herself. 

“No,” Hermione stage-whispered, knowing the woman could hear her as Draco and her passed by. “People have been whispering about us since Hogsmeade. She’s just the least subtle about it.”

Draco chuckled as the woman stiffened and turned away, her nose up.

* * *

Hermione was immediately grateful they had chosen to walk to Hogwarts. By the time they entered the Great Hall, the gala was in full swing and buzzed with hundreds of guests all too distracted to pay any mind to her and Draco. 

She glanced over at the side of the Hall where a makeshift bar had been set up, tucked away to a quiet, mercifully empty corner.

“Drink?”

The look Draco gave her—a burning, grateful gaze—tightened something in Hermione’s core. His eyes flicked to her hand on his arm and she let go quickly, realizing too late that her knuckles had grown white around him. 

He nodded. “Please.”

She weaved through the crowd towards the bar and although she couldn’t see him, she felt him trailing her close behind. She gestured to the bartender and handed one of two firewhiskies to Draco.

“May this night end quickly,” she said, raising her glass to his.

His lips quirked. “Cheers, Granger.”

Hermione raised her glass to her lips—and stopped short, her eyes widening over Draco’s shoulder.

Draco’s brows furrowed as he finished his sip. “Granger?”

“Malfoy, I’m really sorry—No—” She placed a hand on his chest to stop his protest at the use of the ‘s’ word. “I didn’t think she’d approach tonight. I—should’ve given you more warning.”

The furrow between his brows deepened and he opened his mouth, but a soft voice cut him off.

“Hello, Draco.”

His whole body stiffened under her hand and she dropped her arm back to her side, watching warily as he turned to face the perfect amalgamation of Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Black with honey-brown hair.

Little five-year-old Teddy held Andromeda’s hand, one finger of the opposite hand currently being nursed by his mouth. He tilted his mousey-brown head curiously at Draco, a stripe of white hair appearing as he looked between his cousin and his grandmother.

Andromeda’s face, although softer and kinder than her sisters, still held the sharpness of a Black as she gazed at her nephew, waiting for him to respond.

“Hello.” Draco’s jaw ticked and the color completely drained from his face as he stared upon his aunt. Hermione wondered if they had ever seen each other before, in passing or in pictures.

“'Mione!” Teddy pulled his finger from his mouth and waved excitedly. She smiled and stepped out from behind Draco, giving Andromeda a peck on each cheek before dropping to one knee and pulling Teddy into a hug. 

“Harry said that he would take me to Ginny’s next Quidditch match! Did you hear? And he said that if I was good, I could—” 

Teddy chattered into Hermione’s ear. She nodded and smiled intermittently, but her eyes and ears were trained on the familial pair towering above her.

“You look well.”

“Yes, I’m… You also…”

Andromeda smiled kindly, nodding.

“Draco, if you don’t mind, I’d like us to sit and have tea soon. I’d like Teddy to… We’d like to know you.”

There was a pause. Too many breaths between his aunt’s request and his answer. 

Teddy continued yammering in her ear about toy brooms and promised flying lessons as Hermione hummed and gasped in response as if she was listening to him.

Finally, Malfoy nodded. His jaw looked clenched hard enough to crack teeth.

Andromeda gave him a strained smile. “Tomorrow?”

His brow ticked and he nodded once more.

Andromeda reached for Teddy. “Tomorrow then.” 

Hermione kissed Teddy on the cheek and shooed him away. Her shoulder brushed Draco’s as she rose to her feet. She hadn’t realized how close she was to him. His hand twitched against her palm, and as his pinky curled around her own. She bit her cheek.

“Nana,” Teddy whispered as he turned to follow Andromeda, “He has hair like Aunt Cissy. Did you see?”

Draco drew in a sharp breath. He cursed and downed his drink in one gulp. 

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off sharply. 

“Don’t ask me again, Granger.” He shoved his hands into his cloak pockets and her hand felt suddenly cold. “Please.”

 _Are you alright?_

“There you are.” Harry approached Hermione from the side and Draco groaned, muttering something under his breath as he placed his empty glass on the bar.

Harry was joined by Ginny who wore a smirk, Ron who scowled at the sight of Draco and Hermione together, and Luna who, of the four, was the only one to wear a genuine smile. Harry wore what could only be described as a wince etched onto his face. He nodded to Malfoy who responded with a begrudgingly muttered " _Potter_."

“Hermione, Kingsley says he needs us for pictures.”

Hermione knew there would be something that made her snap. Frankly, she thought it would be the stress of the anniversary itself, or she had assumed it would be reliving her nightmares inside the castle. Perhaps it would be the constant anxiety that any cool breeze on her chest meant her sticking charms had worn off.

But she really should have known it would be this.

“This night isn’t a _bloody fucking_ photoshoot, Harry!”

Harry’s wince deepened and Ron chuckled, muttering an _I told you_ under his breath.

“I know, Hermione. But Kingsley requested it.”

Hermione huffed and shoved her unfinished drink into a shocked Draco’s hand. She grabbed Ron and Harry and pulled them along behind her, making a beeline for Kingsley who stood with a photographer and Robards.

“C’mon, ferret,” Hermione heard Ginny behind her. “This will be entertaining if nothing else.”

Hermione dropped the boys’ arms as they reached Kingsley, but before she could get a word in edgewise, he held up his hands in defense.

“I heard you from across the hall, Hermione.” 

There was a snicker behind her and it concerned her slightly that she couldn’t tell if it came from Ron or Malfoy. 

“This will be the only one, I swear,” Kingsley finished.

Hermione turned her ire to the photographer who looked ready to run, but her stomach dropped as she recognized his face. Her eyes softened.

“Of course,” Hermione grabbed the photographer into a quick hug. “How do you want us, Dennis?”

Harry and Ron both clapped Dennis Creevey on the back as he nervously directed them before the now-closed Great Hall doors. Hermione knew Kingsley had probably requested Dennis from the _Prophet_ specifically to avoid an argument with her, but she bit her tongue. She'd talk to him another day.

Dennis took a few photos, arranging them with Kingsley, then a few just as the three of them. All the while, Hermione’s eyes kept flicking back to Draco, who stood between Luna and Ginny, the latter seeming to find great amusement every time Hermione’s eyes wandered from the camera lens to him. 

Draco watched her in return. His heated gaze followed her every movement and his eyes, more often than not, wandered down her neck to the deep v-cut of her dress. 

She wanted to scoff at the typical male gaze, but the fire on her chest and neck that followed behind his wandering eyes begged to differ. It felt that if she’d only looked down there’d be burn marks where his eyes had traced.

Hermione threw a half-hearted glare towards a smug Ginny, now understanding why she was so insistent Hermione wore this particular dress robe.

Dennis caught Hermione’s attention again, directing her in between Ron and Harry. She sighed and did as instructed, pulling her friends close. 

Ron bent and whispered in her ear. “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

Hermione drew back slightly and quirked a brow. “Who? Dennis? Ron.”

“No.” Ron shook his head and nodded towards where their dates stood. _Not a date_ , she reminded herself quickly. “Malfoy.”

Hermione felt her cheeks flush, but she scoffed.

“And how is he looking at me, Ronald?” 

She tried to keep her eyes trained firmly on the camera, but Luna’s animated chatter was too distracting. At least, that’s what Hermione told herself. 

Draco’s eyes were still on her. Though this time also narrowed at Ron whose bent head was quite close to her ear. From an outside perspective, it looked like two lovers sharing an intimate secret. Dennis snapped a photo and Hermione bit her lip. She hoped that one didn’t end up in the _Prophet_. She looked to Draco whose black gaze was fixed on her lips.

“Like his eyes alone could burn you up with Fiendfyre.” 

Behind her back, Ron’s hand tugged lightly on her hair and Draco’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Ronald,” Hermione hissed, taking a step back from him. 

She glared at Ron, ready to berate him for the inappropriate joke, wanting to remind him it was Crabbe that used that spell, not Draco, but she froze at the suggestive smirk on Ron’s face. He winked and her face heated. 

“That’s not funny—I thought you hated that I was here with him—I mean—arrived with him.”

Ron chuckled.

“You know what I mean!” Hermione huffed.

Ron shrugged and stepped away from her as Dennis called an end to the photos, but Hermione’s reprieve was short-lived. Robards intercepted her, nabbing Harry and Ron’s attention as well. Hermione hummed and smiled as the Head of her department spoke, but she wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone what he’d said once she heard Luna’s ethereal voice behind her.

“By the way, it’s nice to see you again, Draco. Especially under much better circumstances.”

Draco choked on his firewhisky. “Better circumstances? Merlin, Lovegood…”

Hermione chanced a quick peek over her shoulder. Ginny shifted uncomfortably and Draco caught Hermione’s eyes. She quickly shot forward, nodding her head a little too enthusiastically to whatever Harry had just said.

“It’s nice to see you too,” Draco ground out, and Hermione heard the clink of ice in a glass.

“Your aura is very lavender tonight.” 

A slight sigh from Draco and then through clenched teeth, “How’s that?” 

“Well, you’re angry,” Luna mused.

“Oh yeah?” 

“But mainly wistful.” 

“How am I _wistful_?” Draco was losing his patience. 

Hermione chanced another look over her shoulder. Ginny gave her a slight wince and a shrug that said _well, he hasn’t lost it completely yet._

“Because you miss something,” Luna’s melancholy voice replied, “Something you never had, but really wanted.” She paused. “Or want.”

Draco didn’t respond. Only the clink of ice against his glass as he took another gulp.

Robards called her name, pulling Hermione back to the conversation. “I’m sorry, Robards. What was that?”

“I said, ‘interesting that Draco Malfoy is here.’”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed at her boss. 

“Oh? Well, his mother is receiving an Order of Merlin tonight.” And although Robards didn’t deserve the clarification, she felt his judgemental tone earned it. “The Wizengamot approved it, after all.”

“And I asked for it.” Harry’s mouth was set in a firm line. 

Robards’ and Harry's professional relationship was contentious at best—Head Auror constantly at battle with the limitations the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement imposed. Hermione was surprised their contention would extend to Draco as well.

“Yes, well.” Robards eyed Draco over her shoulder. “Frankly, I think he takes a little more after his father. I was surprised when he didn’t join him in Azkaban.”

“If you recall Robards, Hermione and I asked for that as well.”

The old man humphed at Harry and Hermione clenched her fists.

“All due respect, Robards.” Her tone held no respect. “Try to imagine what you would do at sixteen if —”

She felt him before she heard him. “No need to defend me again, Granger.” Draco stood behind her. “Once was more than enough.”

Robards turned his hardened gaze to Draco but kept his mouth shut, evidently not brave enough to speak about Draco to his face. Ginny joined Harry at his side and Luna linked her arm with Ron’s.

Draco’s hand came to rest on the small of Hermione’s back, pressing softly. “If you’ll excuse us now, Robards, I require my date back.” 

Hermione turned and met the triumphant smirk of Ginny who mouthed only one word which Hermione refused to acknowledge. 

With his hand still on her back, Hermione walked away with Draco. 

“Granger.” 

She peeked up at him behind a curtain of her hair. His eyes remained forward and he had a look on her face that made her wish not for the first time that they could Disapparate within Hogwarts.

“I think I’m going to need a few more drinks tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally made it to the gala! This night will actually be two chapters rather than one. There's a lot that's gonna happen and I needed to break it up. But I have the next chapter mostly written, so it shouldn't be too long until the next update.
> 
> Thank you as always for reading, comment, kudo-ing, subscribing, and bookmarking! I truly, truly appreciate it.
> 
> Music I listened to while writing, unrelated or related:  
> Late March, Death March | Frightened Rabbit


	10. The Gala

####  **May 2003 | Hogwarts**

Ripples were developing in her water goblet. 

Ever since Harry left his seat and joined Kingsley on the stage, Malfoy’s leg had been bouncing so viciously beneath the table that Hermione was surprised the cutlery wasn’t ringing against each other. 

Harry had just begun his speech for the first Order of Merlin of the night. It was a simple ceremony as Hermione remembered it from her own Order of Merlin, First Class—a short speech, a medallion in a purple velvet-lined box, applause. 

Nothing that should cause the havoc being wreaked upon Malfoy’s calf muscles at the moment, but then again, he was about to get on stage and face a room full of people who had been shooting him deadly looks all night.

Harry reached the anecdote from Fifth Year. The crowd laughed, those who had been at Hogwarts at the time laughing the hardest. George, who stood just behind Harry waiting to receive the Order for his twin, smiled up at Peeves floating above the stage. 

Harry finished his speech, the guests applauded. Fred returned to his table, velvet-lined box in hand. He hugged Ron and Ginny and shooed them away from the Weasley table back to their own seats with Hermione, Luna, Neville, and Hannah— who had only briefly nodded at Draco when he'd first arrived but had ignored his presence thereafter.

Harry cleared his throat at the podium. 

Malfoy’s cutlery tinkled. 

It was more instinct than anything else. She didn’t recall telling her hand to move, but suddenly it wasn’t in her lap anymore. 

Beneath the tablecloth, Hermione’s hand covered Draco’s clenched fist on his thigh, halting his anxious bouncing. The ripples in her water goblet stilled and his hand loosened slightly, just enough that her fingers slipped between the gaps and laced with his own.

She squeezed once and whispered so only he could hear.

“Your mother is about to receive an Order of Merlin, First Class.” She shot him a teasing grin. “Where’s that Malfoy pride we all know so well?”

Draco gave her a vexed look out of the corner of his eye and she laughed under her breath.

“I’m pleased to posthumously award the next Order of Merlin to Narcissa Malfoy.”

There were murmurs throughout the Hall at Harry’s words. Hermione watched as a few heads at various tables turned to look at her own.

When Harry spoke again, it was with a hint of incredulity. He couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of his mouth as much as the rest of the guests couldn’t believe hearing them. 

“Here to accept on his mother’s behalf is Draco Malfoy.”

Hermione squeezed once more and unlaced their fingers.

For five years his name had barely been uttered in society. Draco’s disappearance and Narcissa’s subsequent retreat from the public had been just fine for the Wizarding community if you’d asked them. Hermione had not.

She gave Draco an encouraging smile as he stood, but it only seemed to make him more nervous. His lips were white, pressed so thin his mouth seemed to disappear altogether. The murmurs grew as the guests twisted in their seats. They'd given up all pretenses and were now openly staring at him as he walked to the stage. 

Draco ascended the steps. He rolled his shoulders back as he loosely shook Kingsley’s hand. There was a look of patient indifference on his face as he stood just behind Harry’s shoulder, hands clasped behind him, but in his steel-gray eyes, Hermione saw a multitude of emotions whirling. And then she watched them all flicker away, disappearing behind a fog of Occlumency, his eyes glazed over. Distant, they scanned the Hall lazily.

Harry spoke again. 

He spoke of entering the Forbidden Forest. 

Ginny’s hand grabbed Hermione’s over Draco’s empty seat. 

He spoke of laying face down on the forest floor after reaching Voldemort, a green flash. 

Draco’s jaw twitched infinitesimally. 

Harry spoke of gentle hands checking for his pulse. Of long blonde hair and an urgent whisper. Of the moment he knew that a mother’s love had once again saved Harry Potter.

Hermione watched as Draco’s eyes widened fraction-by-fraction, and as Harry reached the end of his story, the foggy film in his eyes collapsed. Harry’s words punctured whatever hold Draco had on his Occlumency. His body was rigged. His shoulders jerked and Hermione wondered if there would be bruises on his hands with how hard he seemed to grip them behind his back.

“I have a lot of people to thank for that night five years ago,” Harry concluded. He lifted the velvet box from the podium. “But I have Narcissa Malfoy to thank for my life.”

Draco deflated, his breath leaving in a rush.

“He really hadn’t known…” Hermione breathed. Ginny tilted her head at her questioningly.

* * *

Draco blacked out. He wasn’t sure he thanked Potter or Kingsley, or if he took the velvet box from Potter’s hands or if it was shoved into his grip. 

_I have Narcissa Malfoy to thank for my life._

One minute he was on the stage, hearing words that didn’t make sense, and the next he was through the Great Hall doors. 

There was the sound of steady applause from the Hall; albeit quieter than for the Weasley twin and a little more unsure. Draco vaguely remembered passing by Granger, her smile dropping as he swept past her and their table. Did he give her an apologetic smile, any sort of look? He wasn’t positive of anything at that point.

His feet tracked a familiar path to the boathouse stairs, mercifully empty of sneaking students.

He swiveled as he reached the second landing, the velvet box fell with a thunk to the steps. He placed his hands on the railing and leaned over the side. The Black Lake rippled below him, lapping the shore.

This— His mother—

He couldn’t process what he’d just heard. It warred with everything he’d ever known, ever believed. He closed his eyes, memories from his childhood flashing behind his eyelids. 

_Narcissa, standing by as Lucius screamed at him for his poor marks, for letting a Mudblood beat him in every class._

_Fourteen-year-old Draco, whispering fearfully to Narcissa about the events at the Quidditch World Cup, about how drunk Lucius had gotten, how he and Mr. Nott had tortured a family while Draco and Theo hid. Narcissa, responding stoically, “They were only half-bloods, dear.”_

_Lucius in Azkaban. Fifteen-year-old Draco, asking what this means for their family, concern dripping from his words. Narcissa replying only, “We are Malfoys. We do not need to fear what’s coming.”_

_Narcissa, releasing the wards and opening the doors of their home to the Dark Lord, welcoming him._

_Narcissa, standing stone-faced beside Snape as Draco screamed in agony, the Dark Lord’s power entering his skin and searing into his muscle, inking a hideous skull and snake._

_Narcissa, still as a statue as her sister, his aunt, gleefully_ Crucio' _d him. The Dark Lord beside Lucius and Narcissa, telling them that their family is a failure, that they cannot make another mistake. Narcissa nodding as Bellatrix swings her wand down at Draco again, his insides ripping apart._

_Narcissa, urging him to name Potter and Granger. Telling Lucius they must be certain, they must return to the Dark Lord’s good graces._

_Narcissa sitting beside Lucius in the Great Hall, whispering and healing him, not sparing a glance for her soot-covered, bloodied son._

Draco inhaled sharply as his memories swirled. Potter’s words echoed in his mind, twisting the memories, brightening the colors until they were almost impossible to look at.

 _Coming home from Hogwarts after his exams to extra sweets in his bedroom. A note in Mother’s cursive,_ For my little Potions Master.

_Mother, hugging fourteen-year-old Theo Nott after the Quidditch World Cup, telling him that he always had a room at the Manor. Mother, ushering an angry Lucius away from the bags in the front hall._

_Noises coming from the kitchen, a room in the Manor Draco didn’t even think Mother knew about. A house-elf appearing before him, asking him “What does Master Draco need?” as sobs echoed down the hallway._

_A delicate hand shaking as she brings down the wards of the Manor._

_Draco, lying in bed and drifting in and out of consciousness through the pain. The scent of florals and soft hands rubbing a cooling paste across the black ink scarred into his arm._

_Mother, calling for Bellatrix, distracting her from Draco, reminding her sister that he cannot serve their master if he is not conscious._

_A concerned look from Mother as Draco stutters a non-response to her question and turns away, his stomach sick. A flicker of realization in her eyes as he glances, panicked at the girl in his aunt’s hands. A hand around his elbow as his knees threaten to buckle at Granger’s screams._

_The Great Hall. A squeeze of his fingers as he hands Mother her wand. Draco, watching as she turns to heal Lucius, stopping halfway in her pivot, meeting Potter’s eyes and nodding once._

Draco gasps, panting over the railing as his eyes open. He wants to vomit. He wants to cry. He wants to scream until his vocal cords tear. 

How did he not see? How did he forget everything Mother did for him? For Theo? _Fuck_ , for Potter and Granger?

House-elves appeared when summoned by their families, that magic was old and ingrained, no matter what socks were given out. Mother had disappeared from the drawing room, leaving Draco slumped in a chair by the fire. He’d thought she’d left to take care of the snatchers outside, but when she’d returned, so had Potter and Weasley. 

And Dobby.

Draco shoved the heel of his palms into his eyes, pushing on them hard enough to see stars.

He’d left the country in a rage. He’d drunk himself into a stupor for months and never answered her owls. He’d worked himself into a better person for years after that and resented her for his past, never stopping to consider if her life and beliefs had ever come crashing down around her as well.

He’d heard she was dying and he treated her the same he treated Lucius: a past to be ignored.

And she’d died without ever seeing her only child again.

A sob wrenched from him.

The step creaked above him and Draco had transported back five years ago exactly. He heard her reach down and collect the velvet box from the stairs.

“Granger, not—”

“It’s me, actually.” 

Draco tensed at Potter’s voice. He pulled his palms from his eyes, sure that they were red, and pushed off the railing. It’s not the first time Potter has caught him crying, Draco supposed, but he’d honestly hoped it would never happen again. He turned and leaned his hip against the railing, crossing his arms and quirking a brow. The perfect image of usual disdain for the Boy Wonder once more.

“Don’t you have hero duties to attend to, Potter? More awards or such nonsense?” Draco sneered. “Your guests will miss you. It is _your_ night after all.”

Potter rolled his eyes behind his glasses, his smirk barely visible behind his shaggy stubble. “Drop the act, Malfoy.”

Draco’s fist tightened in the crook of his elbow.

“I let Kingsley handle the last award,” Potter continued, a leading-edge to his tone. “Your aunt is accepting an Order for your cousin. You’re missing it.”

Draco’s jaw twitched at the use of familial language.

“My aunt, _luckily_ , is dead,” he replied, “I don’t know that woman in there.”

“You should. Your mother would have wanted you to.”

“ _Don’t_.” Draco’s fist slammed into the wood railing. “Don’t speak of my mother as if you knew her. She lied for you because she was saving our own skins, nothing more.” The words rang hollow in his stomach as he said them. “You didn’t _know_ her.”

 _Did_ you _, Draco?_

“I did actually.” Potter shrugged. “Not as well as you, obviously. Perhaps not as well as I would’ve liked before she… But— She is my godson’s aunt after all.”

Potter set the velvet box down on the ledge beside Draco who didn’t make a move to pick it up, but his eyes never left it.

“Listen,” Potter continued, “I was raised by my aunt and uncle since the moment my parents died, but I never considered them family. The _Weasley’s_ have always been my real family.”

Draco fought the urge to throw the box at The Chosen Idiot’s head.

“But there’s something to be said about blood… even when you hate them. Unfortunately, it took me until after my aunt and uncle died to realize that. But now I see my cousin Dudley on a—” Potter’s mouth quirked, “well, let’s say it’s more often than I would’ve thought.”

Draco finally snapped. “Is there a point to this sickening anecdote, Potter?”

“I know you’re reckoning with a lot right now, but you should really meet with Andromeda and Teddy. _You_ are _also_ their only family left.”

Potter turned and headed back up the stairs before Draco could respond, or snap that he’d already agreed to tea. 

As the echo of Potter’s footsteps faded away, Draco sighed and finally picked up the velvet box. He shrunk it and tucked it into his pocket. Despite its smaller size, it seemed to weigh down his robes. 

He didn’t know what to do with it, but maybe tomorrow Andromeda would have some ideas.

* * *

He’s not sure what told him that she’d be there, but once Draco re-entered the castle, his feet stepped away from the Great Hall entrance and took him down the empty, quiet corridor until he entered the dimly lit library.

Across from the entrance, on the other side of the open area where reading tables lined the space, Granger stood between two towering rows of shelves. She meandered down the aisle, scanning titles as she went. Her fingers drifted lightly across book spines. She carried a wine bottle by the neck.

Dimmed magically in the empty library, the glow of the torches flickered around her. Her skin glowed amber in the dancing orange and yellow of the torchlight and her navy dress seemed to billow slightly behind her in some invisible wind as she walked. She looked shorter than he remembered, and he realized that her heels, and her cloak, were abandoned on the study table in front of him, her feet padding against the stone floor with soft echoes. 

He felt a tug in his stomach and he followed it, weaving through the tables and following her down the stacks. 

She must have heard the clack of his shoes against the stone floor because she stiffened for a moment before relaxing again, her shoulders rising and falling as she took a deep breath. She took a few more steps before her fingers stalled on the spine of a book. She stopped and turned halfway, examining the title.

Draco reached her side and glanced over her shoulder. _A History of Creatures’ Rights._ She set the bottle of wine down on the ledge and pulled the book off the shelf. 

He moved away, leaning against the opposite stacks behind her. He half expected her to start reading, but she only examined the cover, smoothing her hands over the embossed lettering. 

There were golden strands in her dark brown hair, highlighted by the torches. He’d never noticed before. His eyes followed the swirl of her curls down her back and scanned down the rest of her form unbidden. Her dress hugged her body perfectly and his fingers twitched towards the curve of her hips where he knew his hands would rest perfectly—

“I’d hoped you hadn’t left.” 

He jumped, his eyes shooting guilty up, but he was still only looking at a mass of curls.

“I wouldn’t leave,” he responded.

There was a " _you"_ left somewhere at the end of that sentence. Maybe she’d heard it too because she turned finally, the book still in hand, and smiled.

Draco nodded towards the bottle of wine to her left. “Nicked that, did you?”

Granger shrugged and set the book down on the ledge to her right. “I figured you could use it. I may have indulged while I waited.”

He smirked and saw a third of the bottle gone and a slight blush to her neck and cheeks. Just as well she’d catch up. He’d had several whiskies tonight. He pushed off the stacks and grabbed the bottle, taking a swig. 

As he drank, he noticed that if he took one more step she would be against the shelves at her back, locked between them and him. Her eyes never left him as he drank and he wondered if she could read his thoughts. He swallowed and set the bottle down beside her again.

“How’d you know to find me here?”

His smirk hadn’t left his face. “Where else would I find you?”

Granger’s smile dropped, but it wasn’t so much as a frown than a line of acceptance. She turned to the book she set on the ledge and brushed a hand over the leather binding.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

He frowned. Just like outside Grimmauld Place when he first arrived, she seemed almost resigned over the teasing of her typical Granger-ness—this time, though at least, a little less frustrated at it.

Before he could comment, she cut him off.

“Did Harry find you?”

Draco nodded, his gaze hardening. 

“Good,” she said, “I know that was difficult—”

“Granger, I’d rather not talk about it.”

She pressed her lips closed and met his eyes. He tried to soften his gaze, relaxed his face, tried to tell her without words that he just didn’t want to think about it anymore tonight. She must have understood because she grinned and took a swig from the wine.

He nodded to the bottle. “So why the indulgence?” _And in the library too,_ he wanted to add, but he feared the good-natured teasing would cause the same reaction as earlier.

Granger sighed and set the bottle down. “I was given another lecture by Kingsley tonight. About how I’d make a great Minister for Magic.”

Draco titled his head. “Is that not what you want?”

She was silent, considering the books over his shoulder.

“I…” She bit her cheek and tried again, finding his eyes once more. “Is it wrong to say that I don’t know?”

Draco laughed, surprising both of them. 

“Granger, almost everyone knows fuck all what they actually want to do. Merlin, I shovel hippogriff shite for a living.”

Her shoulders shook as she tried not to laugh and her nose scrunched up. He had the urge again to brush his thumb down it, smoothing it out. 

She sighed once her laughter subsided.

“Shouldn’t _I_ , though?” she asked. “I’m the _Brightest Witch of Her Age_ , after all.” She waved her hands in the air in mocking fanfare.

“And I’m a Malfoy. I’m not even supposed to have a job.” 

She let out a breath of a laugh. “I had my whole life planned out since Fifth Year. And now… I don’t know. There are still prejudices on purebloods and muggle-borns. There are still unpaid house-elves. There are still werewolves who aren’t allowed to come here.” She gestured at the Hogwarts crest on the wall. “The DMLE just feels like a stopgap. I’m not _doing_ anything. Kingsley isn’t _doing_ anything.”

Draco spread his arms, his eyes wide in teasing earnestness. “What do you mean, Granger? He put on this party to celebrate Harry _fucking_ Potter.”

He thought he’d get another hard look, a lecture on how this was a gala to honor those who fought and died, but instead, laughter burst from her. She brought a hand to her mouth and she looked torn between wanting to cry or wanting to keep laughing. Instead, she took a swig from the bottle and fell back against the bookshelf ledge. Draco snagged the bottle from her as she finished and took his own gulp.

“So, what do you want?” he whispered, “What makes you happy?”

She blinked up at him and they were closer than he'd thought, his legs almost pressed against hers, her neck craned to meet his eyes. His head felt fuzzy.

She smiled slowly and hummed. Instead of answering his question, she slid past him, her body brushing dangerously against his hips, and stole the wine from his grip.

“It’s after hours,” she said, wiggling the bottle at him. “Want to explore the castle?”

He rolled his eyes. “Granger, you’ve definitely wandered the castle after hours before and we all know it.”

He followed her out of the stacks. She wrapped her cloak back over her shoulders and handed him the bottle while she grabbed her heels, the straps swinging from one finger.

“Yes, but never drunk and this time not under an invisibility cloak.”

Draco drank from the bottle and groaned as he swallowed. “Don’t remind me of that fucking cloak. You three were insufferable, do you know that?”

He grimaced, cursing the wine and his fuzzy brain. He waited for her sharp retort, but Granger only blinked at him, her eyes focused on his neck and chest. He realized she had been staring at him as he swallowed. She seemed to realize it too and took the bottle from him, quickly taking two big gulps.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Granger’s bare feet slapped lightly against the floor as she ran ahead, quiet laughs puffing through her lips. Her heels dangled by the straps from her fingers. Draco rolled his eyes and slowly jogged a few steps, catching up with her easily.

“We’re not students anymore, Granger. Filch can’t get us in trouble.”

She tilted her head back and laughed again as Draco reached her side. 

“I know,” she said breathlessly. 

But a meow cut off whatever she meant to say next. Instinctively, Draco grabbed her arms and pushed her behind one of the columns lining the corridor, rotating her so her back was against the marble and his black suit covered her in shadow.

Mrs. Norris rounded the corner and trotted down the corridor. She glanced over at their hiding spot, sniffed, and continued on her way.

“Fuck,” Draco breathed, his breath fluttering some loose frizz and curls on the top of Hermione’s head. She craned her neck up to look at him. “How is that cat still alive?”

He felt her laugh against his stomach more than heard it, and it tightened something in his core. He stepped back from her quickly and adjusted his robes.

“How much wine is left?” she asked. 

Draco lifted the bottle to check and felt his vision swim as the wine sloshed behind the green glass. He shook his head. 

“All yours, Granger.” 

He handed the bottle over and she finished it off in one swig. He’d be impressed if his brain could think beyond anything other than the feeling of her body pressed against his.

Granger vanished the bottle and swung her heels forward, gesturing that they should keep going. 

They were down in the dungeons, meandering through the castle. It was getting later, and he knew the gala must be winding down now. If he was being honest with himself, he was a little disappointed to miss the dancing, but Granger didn’t seem to care about the gala at all. 

They reached the corridor that led to the Slytherin common rooms and she stopped, sighing and swaying a little on her feet. He stepped beside her, his own steadiness in question.

“It’s too bad there are still students here,” she whispered as if the students behind the stone wall marking the entrance to the common room could hear her. “I never got to see the Slytherin common room.”

Draco raised a brow and side-eyed her. “Had many opportunities to do so, did you?”

She turned her head towards him. “Once. Second Year.”

“What? When?”

Granger smirked but didn’t answer him. Instead, she stepped forward and swung around on the balls of her feet so they faced each other. She put one hand on his shoulder, bent down, and slung her heels back on each foot. 

Draco almost jerked back at the casual way she touched him. It’s not like they hadn’t touched before. After all, she was on his arm almost all evening, she held his hand, they’d just been so close behind that column that their chests were touching, breathing in tandem. But this touch was different. It was a small thing. A casual use of him as a steadying surface, an infinitesimal gesture of trust that he’d hold her up.

It burned him up inside in two ways. 

He wanted to listen to whatever creature was inside him that had been clawing its way out to her for the past month, ever since the Harpies match. He wanted to pull her closer. 

But he also wanted to pull away. He knew that no matter what his mother had done or he’d wished he’d done differently, Draco did not deserve Granger’s trust, friendship, whatever it was she was bent on offering him through scarves or a reassuring squeeze of the hand.

Heels securely back on her feet, Granger stood straight and took her hand from his shoulder. 

“I want to show you something.”

Draco shook himself from his reverie and met her smile, nodding. She swung her arm in a ‘follow me’ gesture and headed for the staircase.

* * *

They were on the third floor, crouched behind a statue of a one-eyed witch that Draco hadn’t recalled ever noticing before. 

They were hiding, this time not from Filch, but students. The Head Boy and Head Girl were making their rounds, checking that no students had snuck out of their common rooms for a peek at the departing guests. 

The Gryffindor and Ravenclaw pair rounded the corner, arguing quietly with each other. Granger waited until the echo of their voices faded away before rising from her crouch, gesturing for Draco to follow.

“Why are we up here?” he whispered. 

Granger smiled. “ _Dissendium_.”

At the password, the back of the statue opened, the screech of stone against stone echoing down the corridor. Granger winced at the sound, and grabbed a wide-eyed Draco by the arms, pulling him inside the narrow passageway. He cringed as he watched the back of the statue close excruciatingly slow.

Finally, not a crack of light remained from the entrance and only the sound of their breathy laughs could be heard amongst the dripping rock and earth.

Granger’s hands were still wrapped around his upper arms, his back pressed against the passageway wall. His hands, instinctively, had grabbed her waist.

“ _Lumos_ ,” Granger whispered through her giggles.

The wand pressed between her palm and his arm lit up, reflected in her eyes, and made them more gold than whiskey amber. That smile, the one he had laid claim to, shined in the darkness, stretched across her face. 

But her wand also illuminated her scar. The white stretched skin in contrast against her tawny color.

He quickly pulled his hands back from her waist, shoving his fists into his robe pockets. 

The alcohol and good company were distracting him. He may have come with her to the gala, she may have been the one to ask him, and he may be having a good time, but he still carved that name into her as much as his aunt did.

 _And you’re leaving soon, too. Don’t forget that._ He had a job and a family waiting for him back home. Here, all he had was a decrepit manor and imprisoned father.

And Theo. Draco felt instantly bad for his thoughts excluding his best friend, but he pushed that guilt away. Theo had plenty of friends here now, the witch before him as one.

It concerned Draco how jealous he felt at that.

The smile on Granger’s face began to fall as his own lips twisted in a frown. He glanced down the dark tunnel and cleared his throat, lighting his wand with a wordless _Lumos_.

“So, where does this lead?”

Granger didn’t respond. He glanced back at her, catching her furrowed brows before she schooled her face into a polite smile.

“Honeydukes,” she replied, “Come on.”

* * *

“Oh, go on,” she urged, holding a sugar quill against her chest, “Pick something.”

Not long ago, after exiting a trapdoor into the darkened, and clearly closed up for the night, Honeydukes, Granger had spied the open box of confectionaries by the register. She’d sighed wistfully about how she hadn’t had one in ages, and then she’d given Draco a conspiratorial smile. She’d stumbled, tipsily, over unopened shipments behind the clerk’s counter. He’d winced as a box fell in her path while she’d let out a giggle and an _oops_ , reaching her destination and scoping up a quill.

“I’m fine,” Draco replied a second time. 

Unwittingly, his gaze flicked to a nearby sour apple pop, and unfortunately for him, Granger’s keen eyes noticed it. 

She plucked the pop from the bucket it resided in with its compatriots and stepped forward. Her foot was dangerously close to stepping on his dragonhide shoes as she slid the stem into his suit’s chest pocket with a smile.

“Stealing, Granger?” he asked with a raised brow. 

She shrugged and grinned lazily at him. “It’s just two little candies.”

He shook his head and grabbed for the pop, prepared to put it back when her hand settled over his. 

“Oh come on, Malfoy,” she laughed, “Let me do one very _un-Hermione_ -like thing.”

“You’re out with me,” he replied, “That seems very un-Hermione-like already.”

She blinked up at him with that smile again and he wondered if that was the first time he’d ever called her by her given name—at least in real life, and not in a wet dream.

Hermione stepped closer to him and tapped the apple pop further into his pocket with one finger. 

_“Indulge me.”_

Her husky whisper did something to him that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since Pansy first tried to sleep with him in Fifth Year. Not since he hooked up with that witch in Salem, blacked out on too much whiskey and beer, making up for his teenage years spent following madmen instead of discovering the pleasures other sixteen-year-olds were supposed to be discovering.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up and his fist tightened in his trouser pocket, willing his lower body not to react further as her breath ghosted across his jaw and her body swayed unsteadily into his.

He took a step back and Hermione stumbled forward slightly, blinking confusedly up at him. He covered his panic with a smirk and pulled a galleon from his trouser pocket. 

“Alright,” he replied, “Only if you’ll indulge me in a very un-Malfoy-like thing.” 

He placed the galleon by the till.

Hermione smirked at him like they shared a secret. 

“The omission of your given name doesn’t escape me,” she said, her low voice still plaguing him. 

She stepped up beside him, facing the entrance to Honeydukes, the dark street empty past the warped glass door, and he, facing the back of the shop. Their shoulders touched and she turned her head to him.

“ _Draco_ would do the right thing. Wouldn’t he?”

He bit back a strangled sound from his throat at his name on her lips. 

“Even drunk, nothing gets past you, Granger.”

She giggled and pushed away from him with one hand. “I’m not drunk!” And then she laughed even harder at how ridiculously unconvincing she sounded.

* * *

Draco walked Hermione all the way back to The Three Broomsticks where she was staying for the night. She claimed she got the room as a treat to herself, but Draco looked around the old inn and thought a war heroine and the smartest witch he knew could treat herself better than this.

He also walked Hermione all the way up the stairs to her room. Not for any particular reason at all that he would admit to himself, other than he was leaving for the States soon and she deserved a proper goodbye and thank you because he didn’t know if he would’ve survived this night without her.

Not at all because he was still pleasantly buzzed from the whiskey and wine and her company. Not at all because he was still imprinting her dress in his mind next to the periwinkle blue one. Not at all because there was something inside him that felt magnetized to her.

Hermione chatted the whole way from Honeydukes to The Three Broomsticks. It seemed like alcohol affected them both in different ways. Draco had always grown quiet and introspective, and she seemed to lose all inhibitions that stopped her from chattering endlessly on whatever facts or anecdotes that came to her mind.

He found he didn’t so much mind the sound of her voice.

Hermione continued their fairly one-sided conversation from the passageway. She had told him about Second Year when she had Polyjuiced herself into a cat (he had laughed for a solid five minutes at that) and how Potter and Weasley had conversed with him in the Slytherin common room under the guise of Crabbe and Goyle (he’d been right pissed about that).

As they walked into the pub and up the stairs to her room, she moved on to Third Year and how she’d had to use a time-turner to attend all of her over-scheduled classes (he was still a little annoyed at the special treatment McGonagall had bestowed her students but denied others) and Potter’s discovery of the Marauder's Map—hence his knowledge of all the secret passageways in and out of the castle (Draco was, in fact, _very annoyed_ at that. No wonder Potter had always been on his fucking heels.)

“If I’d known about the Honeydukes passageway,” he snipped, “I wouldn’t have tried so hard with that fucking cabinet.”

Hermione’s heels stuttered against the wood floor just outside her door. 

Draco wanted to take back the words as soon as they left his mouth. Why bring up that blasted cabinet? Why bring up the fact that you let fucking Death Eaters into the castle on your way to fucking kill an old man? Why are you such a _fucking idiot_ , Draco?

To Hermione’s credit, she didn’t respond and Draco hoped that perhaps she was drunk enough to forget he’d said it, that she’d say goodnight, fall asleep, and wake up the next morning with no memory of his absolute fucking idiocy.

No such luck. She turned from her door to face him and leaned back against the wood. He inhaled, ready to take back his words, excuse them for drunken blather.

But she spoke first.

“You told Luna how to find Neville and the D.A.”

He blinked, his mouth snapping shut. “Excuse me?”

“The passageway from Hog’s Head to the Room of Requirement.” Hermione tilted her head at him, her eyes unfocused, looking at him like he was a riddle she was so close to solving if she could just understand the next line. “How did you know about it? It was created after Neville entered the Room, after…”

“Snape knew about it.” Draco swallowed, his eyes shifting away from hers and locking on the wood grain of the door. ”I’d wondered why he’d told _me_ instead of doing anything about it, but… It was just before I left for Easter hols.”

He clenched his fists and shoved his hands into his robe pockets, not wanting to remember that break at the Manor. Not wanting to think about who the Snatchers brought later.

“When I got home and found Lovegood and Ollivander in the cellar, I thought— I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking at all. She was a _classmate_. She never talked about herself, only asked if I’d seen Longbottom or the She-Weasel. I guess I wanted her to know that her friends were… they weren’t _safe_ , but they were alive.”

Draco kept his eyes above her, fixed on the door. He didn’t want to see her face, to see her remember, after everything tonight, that he had been a Death Eater who’d kept her friends starving and locked up. 

He’d answered her question truthfully, and he _was_ a Death Eater who’d kept her friends starving and locked up.

He resigned himself to what would happen next: She would enter her room, close her door, and he would return to Rose and Will and Chroma and the Reserve. He’d get Theo to complete his Gringotts transfer. He’d never have to see Hermione Granger again. He’d never have to feel whatever it was inside of him that pulled himself towards her. 

He would return to work in Wisconsin, go to baseball games, and chalk it up to loneliness. Maybe he would finally take Will up on his offer to go to a Muggle bar and try to ‘get him laid.’

And, hopefully, one day, the dreams of her would stop too.

Granger pushed herself off the door. He bit back a sigh, ready for the inevitable “goodnight” or “fuck off” or “you foul, evil”— whatever it was she said to him Third Year before slapping him into the next week.

Her hand raised slowly— he braced— and, gently, she traced the back of her fingers from his jaw to his cheek, letting her palm rest there.

Draco’s breath caught in his throat, a visceral reaction that he’d felt this before, in a dream two weeks ago. But this— this reality was _so much better_.

Like in his dream, he unconsciously pressed his cheek into the warmth of her palm. 

_“Draco.”_

Like in his dream, she breathed his name, and like in his dream, he wondered how it would taste from the source.

Unlike in his dream, however, he wasn’t hesitant or questioning.

In reality, at that moment, with her hand cupping his jaw and her breath ghosting across his skin and his blood fueled by whiskey and wine, his brain shut down and he closed the infinitesimal gap between them.

His lips claimed hers. Their teeth clicked as they came together, and he thought, for a moment, that he’d made a huge mistake, but then her head tilted and her lips were slanted perfectly against his. 

Hermione pushed back, a breath against his lips before she tilted her head the other way and slid her fingers from his cheek to the back of his neck, meeting her opposite hand and wrapping her arms over his shoulders. 

She captured his bottom lip between hers and he stepped forward, one hand wrapping around her waist, the other bracing them as her back met the door. She moaned when his body pressed into hers and his knees almost buckled at the vibrations against his chest. 

One of her hands untangled from his hair and reached back. He heard the knob turn and the door jerked open. She pulled him forward by the neck into her room, their lips never parting.

The door closed behind him and suddenly _he_ was shoved against it. He groaned as she pushed her hips into him, friction exactly where he wanted it most. She sighed, feeling it too.

“Draco.”

The taste of his name was better than he had ever imagined. Better than any dream. A strangled noise exited his throat and he swiped his tongue against the seam of her lips. Hermione parted them happily and she tasted intoxicatingly of wine and sugar. Draco’s mind swirled and he wondered if he could get drunk off the wine on her lips.

He quickly reversed them, pivoting so her back was against the wall. One of his hands tangled in her hair and the other slid down her spine. She arched her back, and he'd never felt anything as perfect as the curve of her body under his fingers and her hips grinding against his. His cock hardened and he knew, _he knew_ , she had to feel it against her because she rolled her hips against him again, moaning into his mouth.

Draco tore himself from her lips and found her neck, kissing his way across her throat, his tongue tasting all the skin between her shoulders and her jaw. She panted into his ear, and as his hand finally cupped her arse, she lost all control.

Hermione ripped her cloak off her shoulders, giving him even more skin to taste, and her hands left his hair. He missed the pleasant scratches of her nails against his scalp, but then his robes were pushed off his shoulders too, shoved unceremoniously off his person. Her fingers deftly pushed buttons through holes, skin burning a path down his chest. 

He gripped her arse and hitched her higher up against him. He kissed down her chest, down to the deep cut of her dress that had been drawing his eyes all night and nipped at the side of her breast, a small punishment for how she’d been torturing him for hours with the sight of her, posing in those photos, hanging off the arm of Weasley as he’d whispered in her ear.

Hermione sighed, whimpering at the kisses on her breasts— and suddenly Draco’s shirt was down his arms, hanging behind him from his wrists. He brought his lips back up to her mouth and she returned his kiss with starving fervor. She rolled her center against his length and his left hand slammed against the wall by her head, bracing himself as his right kept her leg hitched around him, that delectable roll of her hips every time his tongue swept against her own. 

Hermione moaned and turned her head, tearing her lips from his to catch her breath, but he was undeterred in his quest to taste every speck of her. He kissed across her jaw to ear. She sighed— and a sharp, strangled inhale. 

Draco froze. He pulled his head away and found her staring at his arm, his shirt sleeve pushed down to his wrist and exposing the faded, ashy skull and snake parallel with her face.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed.

His head cleared as if he’d just dipped it into a vat of Pepper-Up Potion. He let go and her leg fell to the floor with a sharp click of her heel. He stepped away from her and yanked his shirt back up to his shoulders.

“Don’t.” 

Hermione reached out, slowly, holding his gaze as if he were a frightened hippogriff. Gently, she unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his sleeve up his left arm. He watched her warily, jerking away as the gray smear re-emerged from under his black sleeve, stark against his pale skin.

“Don't,” Hermione said again, softly but firmly. She held his gaze and he nodded slowly, the tendons of his arm relaxing slightly in her hands.

She brushed her fingertips across his skin, from the tip of the skull to the end of the snake’s head. Then the heat of her palm, soft and firm at the same time, over the entire tattoo. His arm blazed, but not as it had before, back on that snowy night when she first grabbed him. 

“Does this hurt?”

“Yes,” he whispered. She began to pull her palm away, but his fingers wrapped around her wrist, keeping her there. “Not in a bad way.” 

She smiled, and closing her eyes, she brushed her lips against his. 

The blaze in Draco’s arm traveled up his shoulder, spreading down his back and his chest, into every crevice of his body. He groaned and surged forward, crushing her lips to him, conveying through each hungry kiss the words he couldn’t say.

Hermione mewled and he flipped their arms over so his hands were now on top, holding her forearms. 

Draco took her left arm first, tracing his palm down to her wrist and pushing it against the wall by her head. She gasped into his mouth and his tongue swept in after it. His opposite hand moved next, brushing down Hermione’s soft skin, making its way down to her wrist— 

His palm stuttered over raised flesh. He could feel the letters pressed into his palm. _Mudblood_. He ripped his hand away, certain that there would be an imprint of the word burnt onto his skin. 

He pulled away from Hermione completely and her lips followed after him, eyes still closed. She blinked open when she realized he was too far away. 

“I should go.”

Hermione blinked again as if she couldn’t put his words in the right order. Heat rushed across her neck and something seemed to click in her mind. Suddenly she couldn’t meet his eyes, staring at his left side instead. 

“Oh.” She frowned, a furrow deepening between her eyebrows. “Right. Yes. Right.” 

She tried to step away, realized she was against the wall and stepped to the side. She was behind his back before he could blink.

“Sorry.” 

It slipped out of her quickly, without a thought to their agreement, and it was _sorry_ that both destroyed him and hardened his resolve in the same breath. 

He still had yet to say that word for all of the multitudes of things he’d done wrong to her— that scar being one, the word it shapes being another— and now she said it for the second time that night. Apologizing for giving him a memory he could probably produce a Patronus from. 

Draco remained facing the wall, his back to her. He buttoned his shirt. He heard her kick her heels off, each slam of the shoes against the floor making him wince. He bent down, grabbing his fallen robes, and when he finally turned to look at her, she was facing the bed, her back to him.

“Granger.” 

She whipped around. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach and she was unable to meet his eyes, still staring down at his left side. “Right. No. This was stupid. It's just… it’s always going to be there you know?”

_It’s always going to be there. His Dark Mark._

“I can’t just ignore it.” She gave him an unreadable look, almost exasperated.

Draco remained silent. His face had hardened to ice as she spoke and he wondered, if she said one more thing, if he’d crack.

Hermione sighed. “Thanks for coming with me tonight, Malfoy.” 

He closed his eyes. He didn’t crack, but at his surname, he felt solidified into stone. 

He turned and exited the room without another word. He heard her door shut firmly behind him and the lock click. He opened his eyes and he left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I'm so sorry_. We finally got to the end of the gala! Longer chapter than usual for you guys. Consider it a present from you to me on my birthday! I hope you enjoy it. The next chapter will be tea with Andromeda and Teddy and I'm excited for you guys to read it!
> 
> As always, thank you, thank you for reading, kudo-ing, commenting, and more! You have no idea how much your comments mean to me and motivate me.
> 
> Update 2/11: Sorry for the delay in updates all! I'm still actively working on this fic but I'm in a bit of a block right now and working on a much shorter new project to try to help me through that. Trust me that I really want to get you something soon! On another note, I'm in the market for a beta/alpha for all my fics so if you are interested, reach out!


	11. Teddy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the kudos and comments and for sticking with me.

####  **May 2003 | Islington, London**

_“Your hair is down.”_

_Molten eyes on her curls._

_“Hermione Granger. Perfect.”_

_Traced down her entire form._

_“By the way, Granger… Blue has always been your color.”_

_Lingered on her._

_“And how is he looking at me, Ronald?”_

_“Like his eyes alone could burn you up with Fiendfyre.”_

_Fire on her face. Neck. Down the center of her chest. Fire in her core as brown met grey._

_A hand on her back, dangerously low. Fluttering in her stomach._

_“If you’ll excuse us now, Robards, I require my date back.”_

_Her spine pressed into the shelves as he stepped closer._

_“What do you want?”_

_You._

_Pressure on her arm. Locking her against the wall. Fire tracing a path from her elbow to her wrist._

_A strangled sound and then—_

_“I should go.”_

Hermione groaned into her kitchen countertop. Her face was plastered against it. She’d set her forehead down on the cool marble at dawn, hours ago, in an attempt to lessen her hangover-induced headache after discovering her cabinets empty of Pepper-Up Potion. Her breakfast tea had gone cold, long forgotten. 

She tilted her head to the side, her cheek now flush with the countertop, and found Crookshanks curled up on the corner. Hermione glared at her cat— he knew he wasn’t allowed on the counters— but he only narrowed his eyes at her. 

_I’d like to see you try._

Crookshanks went back to cleaning his paw.

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she had slept more than two hours last night. She had not stayed at The Three Broomsticks. After the door closed on Draco, she immediately stripped off her dress, tugged on an old t-shirt and jeans, and forcefully shoved her evening wear into her magically-expanded beaded bag. Fleur would have been appalled at the treatment. Hermione hadn’t even bothered putting on shoes before Apparating straight into her flat’s bedroom. 

Since then, sleep had eluded Hermione for most of the night. Every time she closed her eyes, the evening prior replayed in her mind and her stomach tightened with embarrassment. 

_Gods,_ a grown woman in her twenties running through Hogwarts from Filch? Stealing candy from Honeydukes? She’d torn Draco’s shirt off. _For Merlin’s sake, Hermione._

She blinked down into the counter, the swirls in the marble blurring together past her nose.

Why did she feel so different around Draco? So entirely…

So entirely _herself_.

Who was Hermione Granger if not earnestly passionate about her beliefs? Was she truly honest with herself if she didn’t admit she enjoyed breaking a few rules? _Of course_ she’d gotten a rush from sneaking around with Harry and Ron at school.

For the past few years, Hermione had felt like she was a different person going through the motions, pretending to live someone else’s dull life. Something happened to her during the war. Maybe it was that night in Malfoy Manor. Maybe it was losing Fred, Tonks, Remus. Maybe it was knowing her parents would never truly see her again. Maybe it was all of those things and none of them. But Hermione had not felt like herself in years.

But lately, when she was with Draco, Hermione felt like all the unique nuances of her character— all her emotions— after years of suppression, were suddenly being released in bursts. She smiled more, thought more, talked more. Felt more. 

And _gods_ , she had felt _something_ last night.

Hermione’s face heated at her own thought, warming the cold countertop beneath her dimpled cheeks. She had felt Draco’s arousal against her stomach, his groans in her ear, his lips on her neck. She shuddered at the memory. She _had_ shuddered under his mouth— until she’d gasped at the Dark Mark beside her face and he’d pulled away at her scar. 

And then she’d watched as his mercurial eyes hardened and he’d left— left her.

She hated herself for gasping at his Mark. But she also hated _him_ for making her feel like she should glamour her arm. She’d never been self-conscious of her scar before. Those words carved into her arm were a constant reminder that she’d _survived._ At her lowest moments, she had traced her fingers against the raised skin and reminded herself that she was _alive_. And that _mattered_.

Hermione pushed away from the counter with a huff, sitting up on the kitchen stool. It didn’t matter anyhow. Draco was leaving for America soon, and she was not one to pine away for anybody. The previous night was the last time she would see him. No embarrassing run-ins. All the better.

Even if she wanted to grab him and yell that her scar was nothing but stretched skin over a healed wound.

A green flash from her fireplace had Hermione turning around sharply on the stool. She winced as the flames died down and the pounding behind her eyes increased. Harry stood on her carpet in a Harpies jersey and black trousers, brushing soot from his shoulders.

“‘Morning!” He fixed his askew glasses and grinned. His hair was down rather than pulled back in his usual knot, and it wasn’t the first time Hermione yearned for a pair of scissors.

She narrowed her eyes and greeted Harry in a much quieter tone than he had used.

Harry laughed. “Had a lot to drink, did you?”

“Unfortunately,” Hermione groaned.

“Wouldn’t know.” One eyebrow quirked over the wire rim of his glasses. “You disappeared in the middle of the ceremonies. Malfoy too for that matter.”

Hermione glared at his insinuating tone. “We split a bottle of wine in the library and then I came home, Harry.” It was mostly true… and mostly not true. “To what do I owe your very early morning visit?”

Harry winced. “Sorry about this, but I knew you’d be awake.”

Hermione gestured for him to continue as she downed her now-cold tea, ignoring the roiling in her stomach.

“Do you mind going to Andromeda’s to watch Teddy for an hour or two?”

“Um…” Hermione wracked her brain and cursed the alcohol for slowing it down. The last thing she wanted to do with a hangover was be around a chattering five-year-old.

Harry quickly filled in the silence as Hermione struggled for an excuse. “I’m meant to because he’s coming to the match later, but James has been horrid all night and Ginny needs to sleep or the Harpies will never make it to the finals, and you know how much of a handful both James and Teddy are together, and Teddy is now refusing to leave—”

Hermione raised a hand and cut off her best friend’s many excuses. 

“Just an hour or two?” she asked, wincing at the pain behind her eyeballs.

“Andromeda won’t be long. She’s helping Molly with Luna and wedding plans. You know how much better Andromeda is with Luna.”

Hermione nodded knowingly. Andromeda had patience in droves and even shared some of Luna’s eccentricities. 

Hermione sighed at Harry’s wide, earnest eyes. 

“Find me some aspirin somewhere in this flat while I change.”

Harry grinned and crossed the living room. “Cheers, Hermione!”

She waved him away and slid off the stool, ducking under Harry’s arms with a laugh.

* * *

####  **May 2003 | Somerset**

Andromeda’s house was in Somerset, not far from the border of Wiltshire and, as a result, not that much farther from Malfoy Manor itself. 

It disturbed Draco to know that his estranged aunt, the uncle he’d never met, and cousin he barely knew had lived so close to him his entire life. He’d received an owl earlier that morning— while he’d alternated between drinking a Pepper-Up Potion and coffee— containing her address and time for afternoon tea. Andromeda’s Floo was certainly not connected to his London flat, so Draco had Apparated a safe distance away, in a forest he knew of nearby and set out walking. 

He didn’t mind the walk through the forest. He’d taken up the habit back in Wisconsin actually, usually doing so when he’d needed to clear his head. And he needed to clear his head. 

Absentmindedly, Draco pulled a sour apple pop from his flannel shirt’s front pocket and vanished the wrapping, popping the candy into his mouth. His boots crunched on fallen twigs as he walked. A familiar soundtrack. From under the brim of his baseball cap, he watched the late afternoon sun as its rays dappled through the canopy of newly sprouted spring leaves. He breathed in. He almost felt like he was back home.

Finally, Draco reached the edge of the forest, stepping through the trees to an open field of tall grass. In the distance, a wooden fence surrounded a large expanse of perfectly maintained lawn where a lonely, little two-story cottage stood with ivy growing up the stone sides and a bench beside the front door. If he squinted, he saw a large shed just beyond the cottage. 

Draco stopped at the edge of the field and pulled the pop from his lips, his tongue licking the excess flavor along the seam. With Andromeda’s home in eyesight, he was suddenly second-guessing his decision to accept her invitation. He barely remembers doing so in the first place. 

When Andromeda approached him at the gala, his brain had grappled with two opposing images: Hermione with a little boy in her arms and his aunt who looked so much like the other one that he’d gripped his wand tightly inside his pocket. 

Between the overwhelming night and the abundance of alcohol he’d drunk (a first in a long time for him), Draco only briefly remembered Andromeda speaking. He remembered nodding, and he remembered the brush of a hand against his, a pinky finger locking with his own. That same hand later on his cheek, in his hair, on his bare chest… 

Draco’s head, in the end, had not cleared.

* * *

_Bugger. Shite._

Draco paced, his feet cutting a path in the grass and across a haphazardly placed slate pathway. His inner monologue escaping him in whispered breaths. 

_“Fuck. Fuck— fuck.”_

He dragged a hand through his hair and crammed his baseball cap down on his head. It was almost four in the afternoon and he’d arrived early, as he typically did when he was nervous, which gave him plenty of time to consider turning on the spot and Apparating back to his flat at least six different times.

“Hi!”

Draco froze in his tracks and pivoted. The little boy, Teddy, stood in the open doorway of the cottage clutching a quaffle that looked half the size of him and sporting a mop of mousey-brown hair atop his head. His golden-rod shirt was rumpled and there looked to be a stain of purple jam on his trousers. 

“Hello,” Draco croaked. 

“Are you here to see Nana?” 

Draco opened his mouth to respond, but it seemed Teddy didn’t need any answers, he just needed to voice his questions. 

“Did you know my Aunt Cissy? Can I see your hat? Will you—“

“Teddy! What have I told you about leaving the front door open like that— _Oh_.”

Draco wanted to dissolve into the earth. 

Hermione stood just behind Teddy, one hand on the open door. Her hair was tied haphazardly at her neck with a handkerchief, tendrils escaping on either side of her face. As her eyes landed on Draco, her free hand immediately went to her riotous curls, pulling them over one shoulder and yanking the mass down as if tension alone could tame it. She had deep circles under her eyes. He wondered if she’d also tossed and turned all night. She must have. She looked like she’d rolled out of bed that morning without a thought of a mirror. 

She was beautiful. 

Last night, Draco had returned to his flat and had immediately jumped into a cold shower that had done nothing to cool his arousal. Despite her scar and his Mark, despite her indifferent goodbye, he couldn’t stop thinking about how her hips had rolled against his or her little whimpers against his mouth, and before long he’d pumped himself to completion, one arm braced against the shower wall.

She didn’t want him. She couldn’t ignore what he was. He’d felt sick. 

After his shower, Draco had spent all night Occluding, trying to lock away her smirk in Honeydukes and the way her mouth had tasted after a sugar quill. 

What was wrong with him? He couldn’t blame the alcohol, or her blue dress and the way it cut sensually down her breasts, or the fact that he hadn’t slept with a woman in almost three years. This— this _utter consumption_ of his brain was something else.

Hermione frowned and fixed her eyes on the grass before his shoes. She shifted uncomfortably. 

“Right. Tea with your aunt. That’s today.” She sighed. “Andromeda was held up.”

Draco nodded. “I’ll just…”

Teddy made to sneak past Hermione and out into the front yard.

Draco continued, “I can come back if she—”

The boy’s eyes flicked up to his minder as he shifted past her side, his tongue sticking between his teeth as he tried to make himself as small as possible, quaffle squashed against his chest. 

“Teddy.”

The child’s shoulders dropped. 

_“Whaaaaat?”_

Draco bit the inside of his cheek, the corner of his lips lifting.

“Go inside.”

Teddy turned, grumbling something about Potter and Weasley, and stomped into the house. 

Draco’s smirk quickly dropped as Hermione turned back to him, but she’d already seen it. She scowled at him, the skin between her brows wrinkling. 

His thumb twitched at his side. 

“If Andromeda is late,” Draco cleared his throat, “I can just come back—“

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hermione snapped, “Just wait inside. She should be any minute.”

Hermione turned and disappeared into the cottage without further instruction. Draco considered Disapparating on the spot, but Hermione already thought him a coward for taking the Dark Mark, he didn’t want to also make it because he couldn’t be in the same room with the girl he’d almost fucked.

Draco swallowed heavily. 

He walked through the front door, shutting it behind him, and definitely did not stare at Hermione’s arse currently bent over the kitchen table, her light denim jeans stretched tight over her backside.

“I have to clean up Teddy’s lunch,” she said. 

Draco’s eyes snapped up guiltily, but her back was still to him. 

“You can wait in there.” 

She waved a hand towards the sitting room, visible through an open doorway in the wall that separated it from the kitchen where they stood.

But Draco didn’t move. He waited, watching as she side-stepped around the kitchen table. Keeping her back to him, she waved her wand and plates with half-eaten sandwiches followed her through the air to the sink.

_Granger. Turn around._

She picked up a sponge and began washing the dishes. Slowly. The Muggle way.

_Look at me._

Her shoulders tensed and she scrubbed a plate under the stream of water, the porcelain clacking against the edge of the sink.

Draco frowned. He didn’t know what he’d expected. That she didn’t actually hate his Mark? That he could shove her against a wall, mouth at her tits, run away like a coward, and they’d be able to act as if nothing had happened?

No. He’d actually expected to never see her again.

He pulled his cap from his head and dragged a hand through his hair roughly. He dropped the hat to the kitchen chair before him, letting it hang off the post. With Hermione’s back still to him, he wandered through to the sitting room. 

There Draco found Teddy. The five-year-old sat on the floor, back against the sofa and rolling the quaffle between his outstretched legs. Draco sat in one of the armchairs across from him. His eyes flicked nervously between Teddy and the fireplace, praying to Salazar that Andromeda would walk through it soon. A pot clanged in the kitchen. Had there even been a pot to clean or was Granger that desperate to avoid him?

Draco scowled. This was a right mess. He turned to Teddy instead.

“What have you got there?” 

Draco was not good with kids. He appreciated that Rose and Will hadn’t wanted any. He didn’t know if he would have stayed at the Reserve for as long as he did if they’d had. But Draco got the sense that Teddy liked to talk and didn’t have much stimulation being an only child passed around to various adult caretakers.

“A quaffle.” 

Teddy rolled the uneven ball back and forth and tried not to look too excited that Draco struck up a conversation, but a streak of his mousey hair turned a familiar shade of pale blonde.

“Looks like a professional Quidditch player’s quaffle,” Draco said, indulgently, “Are you one?”

Teddy laughed as if Draco truly believed a five-year-old could play Quidditch professionally. “No!” But then the little boy frowned. He hugged the quaffle to his chest again, and said softly, “Nana found it. It’s my mum’s”

Draco nodded. He wished, sometimes, that he had something of his mother’s. He could though if he could just bring himself to enter the Manor again. 

“Then you’re lucky to have it,” Draco replied with a small smile. Teddy grinned back widely.

There was a shuffle by the doorway to the kitchen and Draco spied a mass of dark curls just on the edge of the entrance. 

“Did you know Mum?” Teddy asked hopefully, “‘Mione and Harry and Ron did.”

“I didn’t.” Draco rubbed the back of his neck. “Not well, no.” 

Teddy seemed disappointed. Maybe the boy had hoped for a story he hadn’t heard before. So Draco added, “I knew your father a little better. Not much, but he was a good professor.”

Teddy brightened at that. “He was ‘Mione’s professor too!”

Draco chuckled. It was easy to do around Teddy it seemed, with so much excitement and unfiltered curiosity from the boy. 

“Yes, well, Grang— Hermione,” he cleared his throat and avidly avoided the spiral curls he could see just beyond the door frame, “we were in the same class.”

“You were a Gryffindor?”

“No…” Draco shifted uncomfortably, unaware how much the child knew of the prejudices between houses. Or what being sorted into his house would have meant. “Slytherin.”

“Oh. Mum was a Hufflepuff. I don’t know what I want to be yet. But Harry says he’ll be proud of any house I’m in, even Slytherin.” Teddy puffed his chest up against the quaffle as if earning the pride of Harry Potter was no small thing— and Draco supposed, to the boy’s small world, it was not. 

Fuck, earning a _handshake_ from Potter had been enough for Draco.

“You have a few years yet to go. You’ll get your house.”

Teddy sighed impatiently and frowned. “I know.”

Draco bit back a smile. He remembered how anxious he had been to finally go to Hogwarts, how he’d begged his mother for Slytherin robes just so he could wear them around the Manor.

“The Sorting Hat will put you where you belong.” Draco hoped he sounded sagely, but really he just didn’t know what else to say.

Draco looked towards the kitchen again, but the brown curls were gone. He was— irrationally angry at that. She could barely speak to him, couldn’t _look at him_ , but she had no problem eavesdropping on him?

Draco stood from the armchair and excused himself from Teddy. If she was going to listen around corners then the least she could do is look at him. He stalked through the entryway and sharply turned— running straight into Hermione.

His hands shot out to steady her, and just like outside Gringotts, she squeaked in surprise. 

Something fell from her hands, a _thunk_ on the ground between them. Her eyes shot guilty away from him and Draco peered down curiously at their feet. 

It was his hat. The navy blue baseball cap with a white M and— 

Draco’s breath caught in his throat and he pulled his hands from her arms as if she’d burned him. 

The navy blue baseball cap with a white M and _a photo of her smiling up at him stuck to the inside._

“I was just looking at it.” The explanation escaped Hermione’s mouth in a rush as if she couldn’t get it out fast enough. 

She bent down and picked up the cap between their feet. She brushed it off and, not once meeting his eyes, placed it back on the chair post beside them.

_Had she seen it?_

Hermione kept her eyes on the chair.

 _Would she look so guilty if she hadn’t?_

Draco cursed inwardly. Had it freaked her out? _Merlin_ , he must’ve looked certifiable keeping a photograph of her in his cap. A Death Eater stalker with her photo on his person and a Dark Mark on his arm. He ground his jaw and closed his eyes.

“Draco,” she whispered and he felt her breath on his chin. 

_Draco again, is it? Not Malfoy? Salazar fucking Slytherin, Granger, just call the Aurors and put me out of my fucking misery._

“Look at me.”

His eyes snapped open and he stared right into the whisky depths of Hermione’s eyes. Her lips were parted and her warm breath pulsed against his chin—

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Draco.”

Hermione stepped quickly back at the same time Draco stumbled sideways into the chair. Andromeda had entered the kitchen from the sitting room Floo, standing behind the spot Draco had just vacated. He gripped the chair behind his back tightly. 

“Hermione, thank you so much for watching Teddy today.” 

Hermione flinched when her widened eyes caught sight of Andromeda. The elder woman smiled. 

“I’m sorry it was much longer than Harry said it would be. I hope Teddy wasn’t too difficult today.”

Teddy stood at his grandmother’s knees and looked quite put-out that he would be seen as difficult at all. 

Hermione quickly recovered and stepped past Draco, careful to keep plenty of distance between them. She kissed Andromeda on the cheek. 

“Not at all, Andromeda.” Hermione’s hands shook as she grabbed her books and bag from the kitchen table. “He was quite lovely.” 

Teddy beamed up at her. 

“I must get going though.” Hermione bent down and gave Teddy a squeeze. Draco saw her hands tremble as she fixed a wrinkle in the boy’s shirt and ruffled his hair. She stood and without a glance back at either of them vanished in a green flash from the Floo. 

“That happens sometimes when she sees me.” 

Draco’s head turned sharply from the sitting room entrance to Andromeda. He didn’t know how long he’d stood there in silence, staring at the spot Hermione had just disappeared from. 

“Hermione tries to act like it doesn’t bother her, but sometimes I think it surprises her. Even after all these years.” Andromeda turned from the fireplace to him, smiling sadly. “I know I look quite a lot like her.”

Draco knew who Andromeda spoke of without her having to say the name, but as his eyes drifted to his baseball cap, he didn’t think it was his aunts that had caused her nerves to tremble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry it's been so long. Thank you as always for all the kudos and comments and the wonderful mentions on discord! It truly means the world to me. 
> 
> I'm still in the market for an alpha/beta for some upcoming WIPs I have on deck if anyone is interested.
> 
> And because I'm a super procrastinator and wanted to shout into the void, I made a [twitter!](https://twitter.com/nevertoosweets_) Follow me if you are so inclined. I mostly shitpost about my own writing and go rabid over Ben Barnes.
> 
> Music I listened to:  
> Like Real People Do | Hozier  
> The Modern Leper | Frightened Rabbit


	12. Andromeda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: alcoholism

####  **May 2003 | Somerset**

“Tea?” 

Draco nodded, mute. 

Andromeda waved her wand and the tea service began to prepare itself on the kitchen table before them. Teddy climbed up into a chair to and Andromeda sat across from her grandson, putting Draco at the head of the small square table. A steaming teacup floated, saucer-less, to the spot on the table before him. 

“Milk?” Andromeda lifted the carafe to Draco. 

He nodded again and she placed it before him, but Draco didn’t move to take the carafe. He didn’t pour a single drop of milk into his tea. Instead, he stared at the wispy swirls of steam rising from his cup. He wondered when the real conversation would start. He was under no illusions that he was here for pleasantries over tea and biscuits. Teddy was already happily munching on said biscuits, chocolate smeared across his lips. The quaffle sat neatly in his lap.

“How was your date?” 

Draco’s head swiveled sharply to Andromeda. Her brows lifted over the brim of her teacup, and he knew she’d seen Draco and Hermione earlier, practically pressed against each other. And she’d also seen the cold goodbye— or lack thereof. 

“It wasn’t a date,” he droned.

Andromeda hummed and she dug in further. “I thought you two hated each other.” She added a spoonful of sugar to her tea. “From what I’ve heard of her time at Hogwarts, at least.” She tapped her spoon gently on the rim and looked back up. “What changed?”

“Nothing,” Draco muttered. “Clearly.”

“Mhm…” Andromeda took a sip of her tea. “And what changed for you?”

 _Five years,_ he thought. _A Quidditch match. A scarf. Wine and sugar quills and secret passageways and finally seeing her as so much more than blood and books and an obnoxious know-it-all._

“I got a job,” he said instead.

Andromeda chuckled and glanced lovingly at a framed photograph on the wall— his mysterious muggle-born uncle, Ted, grinned back. 

“Yes,” Andromeda sighed wistfully, “Removing yourself from pureblood society can do that.”

Draco had a lot of questions about that. But he wished he could ask his mother, not his aunt. He wanted to know what his _mother_ had felt when Andromeda disappeared with Ted. 

Draco wondered about the sisters’ reunion. It was hard for Draco to picture Narcissa sitting at the worn kitchen table, delicately sipping tea with no saucer, nibbling on Muggle store-bought biscuits, and laughing at a toddler-Teddy’s antics. Draco bitterly wondered how long it had taken after he’d left that she reconciled with her sister and replaced him with Teddy.

Draco looked to the small boy, who caught his stare and stood up on his chair to offer Draco a biscuit. 

No, that was unfair. Draco had left _her_. He’d abandoned her. He couldn’t blame his mother for seeking family elsewhere. Draco took the biscuit with a smile and set it on his plate.

Had his mother ever talked about him?

Draco cleared his throat. He watched as Andromeda pursed her lips and placed her own teacup on the table delicately— expectantly. She’d held one hand underneath her teacup as if she’d held a saucer. She looked so much like Bellatrix, but her mannerisms were all Narcissa. 

“I’d rather not,” Draco searched for the right words— the polite words— to say, “beat around the mandrake, as it were.”

Andromeda gave him a tight smile and a short dip of the chin. “You’re right. I asked you here because— well, Cissy wanted it.”

Draco furrowed his brows at his plate. He picked up the biscuit and cracked it in half.

“Narcissa,” Andromeda continued, “well, she didn’t like that you left, of course. But, she understood why you needed to. She asked me, if you ever returned, to reach out. To let you know you still had a family.”

“I still had…?”

“She knew she wasn’t long for the world, Draco, and she knew you may not return.”

The biscuit cracked again. There was chocolate under his nail. 

Andromeda went on. “After everything your father and she put you through. She wanted to let you have your own life, make your own future. Unburdened, unpressured by her. If that meant that you stayed far away from Wiltshire, she was okay with that.”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut, horrified at the prick behind them, at the wet pooling on his eyelashes.

“But if you ever returned, she wanted you to know you were not alone.”

He felt Andromeda’s fingers on his arm and he jerked it away, brushing the back of his hand across his eyes. He opened them and kept his stare fixed on the pulverized biscuit on his plate. 

It hurt to know that his mother knew he wouldn’t come back for her. But more than anything else, it hurt to have it confirmed that she died knowing he resented her. And that she had been okay with that.

This stain lived on his heart, blacker than the mark on his arm. How could he ever get rid of it now? When the one person who could forgive him couldn’t be reached? 

He wanted to cross the veil and fall at his mother’s feet. He wanted to rest his head on her lap like when he was Teddy’s age. After baths, when the horrid gel Lucius forced on his head was washed away, his mother would run her finger through his hair. 

Draco stared at Andromeda’s hand, still on the table beside his arm, slender fingers so like Narcissa’s.

“When did you two reconnect?”

He heard the smile in Andromeda’s voice as she answered. “Christmas of 1998.” 

Draco breathed deeply and swallowed the build-up of phlegm in his throat. For the next two hours, he interviewed his aunt, reciting each question that was listed in his mind: 

_“Were you in contact with each other when I was younger?”_

_“No, although I tried to reach out to Narcissa a few times throughout your’s and Dora’s childhood.”_

_“Did you see my mother often? After that?_

_“Oh, quite often. She was a great help to me when Teddy was a toddler. I even set her up in the guest room upstairs.”_

_“Did she not live in the Manor?”_

_“She did. But there were days she couldn’t bear to be in that great house alone.”_

_“Did she… talk about me ever?”_

_“Aunt Cissy told me a ton of stories!”_

This last answer, from Teddy, had the boy reciting tale after tale about Draco. His time as Slytherin’s Seeker. Getting in trouble around the Manor. His favorite books. Teddy seemed to know Draco quite well despite never meeting him until today. 

The questions continued to flow, but the interrogation finally ended once the chocolate biscuits packet had emptied and Teddy had grown impatient at sitting politely with the two adults. 

Andromeda let Teddy excuse himself to play in the garden just outside the kitchen window. The sun was starting to set in the distance and Draco felt an overwhelming sense of jealousy as he watched the boy with brown hair, and a streak of pale-blonde, chase a gnome out of the flowers. 

He was jealous of _Teddy_ , Draco realized. That the boy had such an idyllic childhood, not surrounded by dark magic or a father who worshipped a madman. He was jealous that Teddy and Andromeda had gotten to be with his mother, and had gotten to have these peaceful moments with her that he’d never had. 

But that wasn’t fair. Draco knew that. He knew that Teddy was born during a war and didn’t have a father or mother. He knew that it was his fault he hadn’t been able to have these moments with his mother and his aunt. But the jealousy would not leave him. It ate him up inside. The blame was all on his shoulders, but _Merlin, why couldn’t he have had this too?_ His plate was a pile of biscuit crumbs. He hadn’t taken one bite.

“Have you gone to see your father?”

Draco’s head snapped up. 

“Why the _fuck_ —” His eyes flashed to Teddy beyond the open window and he lowered his voice. “Why the fuck would I see that man?”

“Narcissa had mentioned how close you two used to be. I thought you might want to visit him while you’re home.”

_Stop fucking calling it ‘home.’ England is not my fucking home. The Reserve is my home. Rose and Will are home._

“‘Close’ is perhaps not the best word,” Draco growled. “More like a blind idolization.”

Andromeda nodded. “Lucius was a large part of why Narcissa never answered my letters when you were young. But from what I heard, he was a doting father.”

Draco snorted. “Oh, yes. He was. If you count molding me into his mindless clone as ‘doting.’”

Andromeda was silent for a moment and Draco brushed his fingers of pulverized biscuits, glad the conversation was over. And then— 

“Maybe you should visit him.”

 _“I will not visit that man!”_ Draco couldn’t help the vitriol in his voice, but Andromeda hardly seemed phased. 

He swallowed back his anger and placed it behind a light wall of Occlumency. 

After a few moments, he cleared his throat.

“Did my mother visit him?” Draco asked. There was no more emotion in his voice. 

“No,” Andromeda tapped her finger on her empty teacup twice. “No, she did not, but I think she regretted that. In the end.”

There was a hesitation before “in the end” like she didn’t want to remind him Mother was dead. The same pause Potter had done the night before. 

“Of all her regrets,” Draco droned, “that shouldn’t have been one. Lucius was a terrible father and possibly a worse husband.”

Lucius never raised a hand to his mother, but Draco had seen the hurt in her eyes all the same after the World Cup, and when Lucius had been arrested during Draco's Fifth Year. 

“He’s family.” Andromeda said, ”He was her husband despite everything. And at one point, I believe they loved each other. I believe that Lucius loved _you_. But they were blinded, your father more so, by pureblood ideology and power. And Cissy was… scared, I think, by the world she had gotten herself into.”

Draco pulled his fist from his teacup before he could crush it.

“Potter may have gotten me to come here with that blood talk, but it will not work now. Maybe it’s those fucking Gryffindor tendencies, but I truly do not understand how you people can forgive those who were supposed to protect you.”

He had heard the rumors around Hogwarts— Potter locked in a cupboard most of his life, unloved by his aunt and uncle, basically beaten by his cousin on the daily. Draco had used it as fodder for his taunts, but after hearing last night that Potter had forgiven his cousin, Draco wondered— as he usually did— at the sanity of the man. 

Draco _would not forgive_ Lucius. He had looked up to his father all his life, desired to be him, to have his approval, and in the end, he was passed off as a familial sacrifice to a belief system that was doomed to fail from the start. It only took a couple of years at Hogwarts and seeing Potter’s seeming immortality to convince Draco of the Dark Lord’s eventual failure, whether he was willing at the time to admit it or not. 

For Draco, there was no epiphany about Lucius like there had been last night for Narcissa. Lucius hadn’t loved his son, Lucius had loved his _name_. The Malfoy name. He’d loved what it had stood for in an ancient, failing society. He’d loved the money it came with, the social standing it brought him. The power. The superiority. But he _never loved_ the person he’d given it to. 

“I regret everything with Mother,” Draco confided, meeting Andromeda’s eyes. “I wish I had done many things differently. I wish I had at least answered her letters.”

Andromeda nodded, not in an accusatory way, but in a way that told him she understood.

“But,” Draco clipped, “my father is as dead to me as she is now.”

The next moment, Teddy burst through the kitchen door with a messy, raven-haired man in tow, and Draco hadn’t felt so grateful to see Harry Potter since the Battle of Hogwarts.

“Nana! It’s time to go! Harry is here!” 

Teddy squealed as Potter scooped the boy up and threw him over his shoulder. Teddy scrambled and flipped himself around, clinging to Potter’s back like a koala.

“Sorry about earlier, Andromeda,” Potter chuckled. 

It disturbed Draco that Potter was so much more familiar with his Black blood relations than Draco was. It was irrational to feel such resentment, but Draco had barely been able to tolerate Andromeda’s touch earlier, and there Potter was, bending down to kiss her on the cheek in greeting.

“It was no trouble, dear,” Andromeda replied. “Teddy had a wonderful time with Hermione. Didn’t you?”

Teddy scrunched up his face. “‘Mione wouldn’t let me go outside. Which was mean. Right, Draco?”

Teddy looked to Draco, a plea on the boy’s face. Potter frowned and looked about to counter Teddy, but Draco cut him off and grinned conspiratorially back at Teddy. 

“Yes, it was absolutely rotten of her.”

Perhaps his competitiveness with Potter would never go away. 

Teddy beamed, looking between his godfather and grandmother as if to say, _see, I was treated quite unfairly._ Draco smirked.

Andromeda shook her head and Potter regarded Draco curiously. “Hermione was still here when you arrived?”

Draco didn’t appreciate the insinuation in Potter’s tone.

“Yes.” Andromeda smiled demurely. “Poor Hermione. I was very late today.”

“Well, speaking of late,” Potter said, reluctantly tearing his calculating gaze from Draco, “Teddy and I better get going or we’ll miss the start of the match.”

Teddy slid down Potter’s back and landed roughly on his feet. He ran to where Draco sat at the table and placed his hands on Draco’s leg. “You’ll come to the match too, right?”

Draco pressed his lips into a thin smile. In reality, Draco really wanted to see another Quidditch match— and actually watch it this time— but… 

Granger would be there. 

Before Draco could politely decline, Potter spoke, “Er— you do have a standing invite, Malfoy.”

Potter looked pained to have confirmed Draco’s full guest pass to his family’s private box. Teddy bounced on his feet, eyes trained on Draco, wide like a Kneazle’s, and his competitiveness overtook him again. _Well, who am I to deny this child my presence over Potter’s?_

“Well, let’s not be late, then.”

Teddy cheered and Potter sighed, rolling his eyes. 

_Is Granger going to be there?_

Andromeda stood and Draco, quickly and instinctively, followed suit. She asked Potter to help Teddy change quickly and gestured for Draco to follow her to the sitting room Floo.

Draco grabbed his hat from the back of his chair and yanked it on his head. He was glad he’d worn his green and grey flannel shirt today, unintentionally in support of the Holyhead Harpies. He walked with Andromeda to the sitting room and they stood across from each other beside the fireplace. 

He didn’t know what else to say to her. He wouldn’t see Lucius again. Not ever. 

But, Draco had decided: He would go see his mother’s grave. He would try to reconcile with her spirit. It was the most, the best, he could do.

Draco couldn’t— didn’t know how to express his thanks to Andromeda, or his apology for his outbursts earlier, but he could give her something else, and he hoped it would be enough. He pulled the reduced Order of Merlin out of his pocket and tapped it with his wand, bringing the velvet box back to its normal size. 

“Would you like to have this? I— I… don’t know what to do with it myself and I feel— she spent so much time here— you should have it.”

Andromeda placed her hand atop the box and gently pushed his hand back towards him. 

“You should keep it, Draco. It was given to you.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I have other… memories I can take from the Manor. Before I leave.”

“You’re not staying here? In England?” Andromeda frowned.

Draco shook his head. “It’s not home anymore.”

“That’s too bad.” She looked to the fireplace where Hermione had left through hours ago. Where he will be stepping through to see her again in mere minutes. “There are so many people here who care for you.”

Draco wished that were true. 

“In any case,” Andromeda continued, “you have a home with us. Should you ever want it.”

He swallowed back a sudden lump in his throat. It was the same words Rose had always said to him. He never thought he’d want so much before and he didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, he wanted to take the globe and push it, bend the map so that the border of Somerset touched the shores of Lake Michigan, so that he could easily step outside that cottage and cross the fields to the Reserve.

“Thank you.” Draco breathed in, seeking strength for his next words. “Thank you. Aunt Andromeda.”

Andromeda smiled brightly at him. Her eyes were glassy and she placed a hand on his shoulder, kissing him once on each cheek. 

* * *

####  **December 1999 | Wisconsin**

Draco sat on a fallen tree at the edge of the forest, an elbow propped on his knee and his chin in his palm. He looked out across the snowy field, watching the puffy flurries bury the red barn in the distance. Just beyond that, the cream-colored one-story house was nearly invisible against the blinding white snow. 

Merlin, he’d never seen so much snow before. He waved his wand, casting another warming charm, directing the snow to fall away from his little bubble on the log.

Not far from him, a corral extended into the line of trees, providing some cover for the great silver beast that watched him warily from behind its fencing. He avoided its gaze. _Fucking hippogriffs._ He would have never accepted that bloody woman’s offer if he’d known a fucking hippogriff would be involved. 

That “bloody woman” appeared from around the red barn as if she could sense his dour thoughts, marching through the snow toward him. Draco groaned out loud. He considered walking away, further into the woods, but she’d already seen him and it’s not like he could avoid her forever. 

The cream-colored house was cramped. Barely any room to stand in the kitchen slash sitting room. And the bedroom they’d given him— _Merlin, it’s a bloody closet!_ Even with the walls separating them, Draco felt like he was sleeping right next to Rose and Will. 

Rose was close enough now that Draco could make out her face through the slowing snowfall. Her honey-brown hair looked darker against the white and it stuck out in wild curls from beneath her gray stocking hat. His stomach tightened, he heard screaming in the wind around him, but then Rose’s eyes came into view— blue eyes that crinkled when they saw him, not whiskey amber that narrowed in hate.

“Good warming charm.” 

Rose sat beside him on the log. Her hip bumped his and he sneered, shuffling slightly away from her. He’d never known someone to be so familiar so quickly. It had only been a couple of weeks since he accepted her offer to work on the Reserve and he could tell she was taking his acceptance to mean friendship rather than what it really was— a convenient distraction.

Rose removed her hat and shook out her hair, snowflakes melting quickly from her curls, and he relaxed at the sight of her golden highlights and how the curls laid calmly down her shoulders rather than in a bushy halo.

“Hot chocolate?” Rose pulled a thermos from her puffy coat pocket and held it out before him. 

Draco looked down his nose at the dented metal and shook his head. “Firewhisky. If you have it.”

Rose pursed her lips. “Nice try, buddy.” 

She uncapped the thermos and poured a measure into a conjured mug.

Draco’s lips tugged towards a smile. The American colloquial was, at least, entertaining.

He knew she wouldn’t have any firewhisky on her. He’d heard her clearly through the wall between their bedrooms several days ago, arguing with her husband, demanding Will throw away all his beer. Draco had been sweating beneath the scratchy quilt of his new bed, leaking a musty, alcoholic stench into the sheets as he’d listened to Will’s negotiating. 

_“Can’t I just hide it from him? Until he’s clean?”_

_“Have you heard of Accio, Will? Gods, honey!”_

He found their marriage fascinating, Will and Rose. Both in their mid-thirties, they hadn’t wanted children, so it was just the two of them, running the remote magical creatures reserve in a middle-of-nowhere, American Midwest village. 

Frankly, Draco wondered if the no-children thing was for the best. Compared to his parents’ quiet, reserved relationship, Rose and Will seemed like sparking wands ready to catch fire. They constantly argued, but always with a teasing glint in their eyes, a lift of their lips. Draco swore that in the past two weeks on the Reserve, he hadn’t once seen them argue without a smile on both of their faces.

It was… something to be admired, he supposed. He wondered if he liked the idea of that better than passive, sharp remarks across a dining room table.

No matter. He’d never see _that_ again, anyway.

“How’re you feeling?” Rose asked, wiping a chocolate mustache from her top lip. 

Draco wanted to ask, _physically or mentally?_ Physically his body felt drained, weak. Dry. It’d been fifteen days since he last subsided on just whisky or gin and the craving was still there. 

Mentally?

His father’s life imprisonment. Running away from the Manor and his mother. The screams he still heard in his nightmares. The mark that would never leave his arm. 

He’d tried, in his weakest hours, to carve the tattoo from his arm with a knife, but the ink remained and now there were just faint white lines underneath, blending into his already pale skin.

Draco didn’t answer Rose. Instead, he watched Will exit the red barn. The large tanned man glanced up at the pair at the edge of the woods and glared before trudging towards the frozen grindylow pond. 

“Your husband hates me,” Draco said, smirking.

Rose nudged him with her elbow. “Calm your ego, big man.” 

She laughed as Draco gave her an exaggerated once over, his eyes scanning her from head to toe. Rose was an attractive woman, sure. He liked trading quips with her, but really, she didn’t do anything for him. Her hair was too thin, too light, and her eyes were too small and lacked depth. She was smart, but not dedicated enough.

“He doesn’t hate you. He just doesn’t trust you yet.”

Draco glowered. “He’s smarter than you, then,” he whispered. 

He stared down at his arm, black ink just visible underneath the rolled-up edge of Will’s borrowed plaid button-up shirt. He clenched his fist and turned his arm, Dark Mark facing towards the earth.

“You want to tell me what that is?” Rose asked.

“No.”

Rose sipped her hot chocolate and unzipped her coat under the heat of the warming charm.

“You can use our Floo,” she said, “anytime Draco. To call your family.”

Rose was prying, trying to get information from him, and she wasn’t being very subtle. 

He sighed. “There’s no one to call.”

She turned her head to him, resting her chin on her shoulder. “Not even friends?”

Draco frowned. There was only one friend and Theo knew where he was and that he was alive and that was enough. Draco didn’t need— didn’t want— any more than that from his past life.

Rose placed a hand on Draco’s knee, and he flinched away. Her hand dropped to her side. 

“I just want to help,” she murmured.

Draco’s eyes flicked over the acres of the Reserve. To the corral where a one-winged hippogriff pranced. He saw the red barn where tailless kneazles, bicorns with only one horn, and Abraxans kept warm through the winter. Draco scowled, his face scrunching with anger. 

“Am I an injured creature to you, Rose?” he snapped, turning his head sharply to her, “Is that why you asked me to come here? ‘To work for you?’”

Rose jerked away from him and her face fell. She shook her head, closing the thermos and placing it back in her coat pocket.

“No.” She shook her head again and turned her sad eyes to him. “No. You just reminded me of someone I loved. I didn’t want you to fall to the same fate.”

“What fate is that?” he hissed.

Her sad eyes flicked between his angry ones. She stood, zipping up her coat and placing her gray stocking hat back over her ears. Her curls stuck out wildly again and he looked away, staring firmly at the snowy dirt beneath his boots.

“Alone.”

When Draco finally looked up, he found that he wasn’t.

* * *

After Draco and Rose had returned to the house together, he asked over the dinner table what his role on the Reserve would be. He asked when he could start. Rose had smiled and Will had grunted to be up and ready by six a.m.

Later that night, Draco slipped beneath the old quilt on his rickety single bed. He pulled the scratchy blanket to his chin and sighed contentedly, listening to the sounds of his housemates move about their bedroom. 

Outside his window, the snow had stopped and the sky had cleared showing all the stars he couldn’t see back in England. He heard the silvery hippogriff chirp through the night and he thought he might try again with the creature tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco has a lot of feelings so we're getting a lot of updates.
> 
> Music  
> Sloom | Of Monsters and Men

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. *Both my Harry and Ginny are inspired by potterbyblvnk who is just...amazing.
> 
> I have a [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nevertoosweets_) now! Come scream at/with me!


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